


Union

by ReceiverofWisdom



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Going down with this ship, I'm open for suggestions on what to put in this fic, More characters to be added, Relationship Development, aliens and space, gets better as it progresses I swear, korra/asami is a possible one-sided relationship, korra/kuvira is one-sided early on, more relationships debated, tons of violence and death, with a side of aggravated romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReceiverofWisdom/pseuds/ReceiverofWisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War has always united humanity, just as well as it has always torn it apart.<br/>This is primarily a Korvira fic with a lot of boiling emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Debrief

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt given to me since Kuvira and Korra have a deficiency of fics. I will likely turn it into multiple chapters.  
> If you don't understand Halo, don't shy away, much is explained through this and the characters are likely as clueless as you are.  
> Korra and Kuvira both evolve throughout this. Kuvira's starting personality is more directed towards how she was in season 3. A lot of development to be done.

Years of military training had them saluting smartly, fluidly throughout the crowd as soon as the first individual gave indication that they had laid eyes on her.  
  
She approached the podium with a quick gait, appropriate for the stern concentration that washed over the bunch, buckling down any stray jittered nerves with a paralyzing appreciation for the sheer air of authority that she carried with her.  
  
Fifteen reasonably preserved Spartans stood before her unwavering, hailing to the unnamed inspection of each and every standing body at her service.  
  
Having just arrived from hovering over an indignant ODST platoon, Kuvira could not have been more pleased with the amount of respect and decency she was given upon arrival.  
  
As she swept her gaze over the lot for the umpteenth time, not even as little as a soldier mouthing words to another crossed her vision.  
  
Disciplined, faithful, deadly.  
  
As far as those above her command were concerned; hers. For the time being.  
  
It was enthralling, daresay breathtaking, to have such specimens under her hand. For all the tales of grandeur that caressed her attention, fifteen (supposedly from the second augmented company) of these super-soldiers was nearly too good to be true.  
  
She yearned to see them all in action.  
  
When Kuvira gave the slightest perceptible nod of her head, dismissing their attentive stances, each one of them sat down, hardly missing a beat. A slighter chill surrendered along her spine.  
  
After a few stagnant moments, a smaller podium-like stand a foot away from her flickered to life.  
  
A holographic being blipped before their eyes and stood along the light-rimmed circular top of the cylinder capsule. Proud and yet reserved, the AI sported the form of a female huntswoman clad in furs. Supposedly Nordic language creased along what leather armour was visible in her chosen form, and she seemed at ease, hands catching their place at her hips while shimmering red and wild hair was attemptedly tamed into two joining braids that bonded down her back. Her attention, unlike the rest of the room’s, seemed focus on some dismal corner as opposed to Kuvira herself.  
  
“In the year 2525 CE,” Kuvira began, “Humanity made its first contact with the Covenant. Soldiers, not so far different from the lot of you, were tested in combat against the new threat.”  
  
She allowed the weight of the statement to settle out long enough that the AI’s stare had finally receded from the far corner of the room. All attention had finally been earned.  
  
“The gifts I offer now are aligned with redemption towards this threat and the countless lives _wasted_ within the valiant efforts of Preston Cole. Yes, _wasted_ , not _spent_ for the righteous betterment of our pious efforts. Your augmentation has fixed the natural flaws of your bodies, and we will soon forget the shame of our defeats.”  
  
The eyes of her audience grew intent. Kuvira grasped another opportune stall, pondering over the most appropriate courses to take her speech towards. Her company, after all, did not respond like the swain over-influenced and buzzing heads of civilians. Every word that would leave her lips was grappled and fed into intelligently working minds.  
  
Tasted, debated.  
  
What influence she gave them then would stand with her for the time that they served. Respect was commanded, but lawful opinions and willingness would be another ordeal to conquer.  
  
“Only a diminutive number of you will be staying with me aboard this vessel. The rest of you will be spread thin throughout the UNSC. While the enemy overwhelms us with their numbers, I assure you, each one of you is worth a hundred of our own. The Insurrectionist colonies are falling as a new era of war rises, and each one of you is being called upon as a beacon for humanity.”  
  
Raising her arm, Kuvira leveled it above the podium where the smaller radiant being stood, a silent signal of revelation. The AI nodded wordlessly, and the various lights about the room darkened.  
  
At a black circular center a few steps down from the podiums where the two stood, a reflective hologram of an orbital planet was produced.  
  
“Reach,” Kuvira introduced, observing with another sweep as the minds of those in her charge were collectively churning with recognition. She placed her hands behind her back, and stood a little more rigidly with what she was about to further present. She was almost startled knocking against the braid down her own back, forgetting that she had not taken it upon herself to more formally put her hair up. It created a brief charge of wariness over how she held up within the eyes of those below her.  
  
Unkempt, rookie, misguided even?  
  
Appearance was not handled lightly. Yet as if she held no reservations about herself in the first place, she continued with her refined tone.  
  
“From here on, this briefing is an eyes-only classification for those who will remain beneath my personal charge. I request that the rest of you step out from the room. Whether or not you will return for an alternative briefing has been undecided. You will wait out into the service hall to be redirected elsewhere. Some of you will even be transferred by tomorrow.”  
  
The air of professionalism about the Spartans was jeopardized.  
  
The statement gained reactions of understandable disfavour. Every one of them had grown together, survived together, and worked together since their earliest days, and Kuvira was the one placed into the heavy responsibility of telling them all that they were about to be torn apart.  
  
A hand towards the back was raised. With relative patience, Kuvira gestured to the individual, who stood up and spoke clearly.  
  
“We’re a squad as a whole,” the female had started, keeping any indignant undertone in careful check. “We’ve functioned with a high success rate as we are now. We don’t work together like other marines. We’re _closer_ – there has to be something to that for –.”  
  
Kuvira cut her off sternly, as if interrupting a protesting child over a small matter, and reigning her reasoning as supreme under all circumstance. Which, by all means, it was. “Tomorrow at o’ five hundred, pelican drop ships will board. I will have a list with your names printed and posted in the following locations –.”  
  
“We can section off for certain missions. Petty Officer –.”  
  
“ _Stand down_.”  
  
A more gentle tone pervaded the thickening atmosphere of the room. Heads turned to be greeted by a graying female, regal but kind-sighted. In spite of catering to the armour on her body, her hair remained untainted by the oppression of a helmet.  
  
Kuvira diverted herself into attention. “Brigadier General Suyin is present.”  
  
When recognition flowed throughout the group, all stood and saluted at attention, until Suyin eased them down, and they were seated once more.  
  
Behind her, another soldier entered in standard apparel; blue eyes optimistic and brown hair lengthy, arranged in two parting sides along her face and a high pony tail. It made her stand out from the rest harshly.  
  
“Sorry for the unceremonious intrusion,” Suyin amended, approaching the podium, and relieving Kuvira of her salute, tugging her away from the seeking eyes of the audience for quick words. “We have another that just boarded in from the last vessel. She’s replacing one of your charges, Jason-045. He’s going to be transferred with the sub-Beta company on the second pelican out of here.”  
  
“Is there any particular reason for this, or is it a standard switch?”  
  
“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Some ONI spook came in and started handing out new directives sheets to Lin and her company as well. I know every one of them is uncomfortable being separated out, and as amazing as it would be to hold them all here under our directives, our hands are tied at best.”  
  
Kuvira nodded thoughtfully at this, and returned to the stand, switching a tone for something akin to compassion instead of boiling impatience for the reluctance of the super-soldiers before her in order to regain charge.  
  
“I understand your apprehension over the idea of being separated. I’ve just been informed that there is nothing I can do about the ordeal, and I’m _sorry_ for that. The best you can do at this point is make-do until things become clearer for us all. Orders are orders, and your job is to follow them. If there are no further questions on the situation, I need you all to collectively file out into the hall, except for SPARTAN-five-five-seven, three-four-eight, and four-four-one.”  
  
With the dismissal, all stood and proceeded to evacuate, excerpt from the three named. Kuvira motioned them closer to the hologram of Reach, and scrutinized the trio, who stood boldly, and exchanged brief looks upon one another.  
  
One had a rounder nose, and a puppy-doggish demeanor. He might have been intimidating were in not for that factor. The one beside him, however, was similar, but a bit more thinned out and sporting more severe eyebrows. Kuvira checked the list for last names, all of which were redacted. It suddenly seemed expected. Requesting sibling information only seemed out of place for the time being.  
  
She backtracked her attention to the female on the end of the other two, who seemed to lack the disciplined attention of a soldier, let alone a Spartan. The female’s eyes roamed around endlessly, like a child who was just introduced to the program and was being given an initial lesson from Doctor Catherine Halsey’s Déjà with a complementary side of snacks. There was appreciable wonder when her stare finally rested on Kuvira.  
  
She tried not to let distaste shine through, and instead, prompted a question once the doors to the room were sealed, and Suyin backed off to the side, giving her space for her assignment.  
  
“Do you remember which system Reach resides within?”  
  
“Epsilon Eridani,” the thinned male responded.  
  
Kuvira made a mental note to begin addressing them properly; Mako-441.  
  
“Within the inner colonies,” the female, Korra-557, added. “Right?”  
  
“Yes.” Another wave of her hand, and the AI zoomed in on the atmosphere around the spectacular planet. “It’s the UNSC’s powerhouse. Twenty-seven hours in a day, and three-hundred and ninety days within a year. The facility that it houses is, by all means, your birthplace. Before the outbreak of the Human-Covenant war, this site was also prime for terrorist bombing from Insurrectionists. Its sister planet, Broker, has been a prime recent target for both the remaining, squandering Insurrectionist forces, and smaller Covenant artillery ships.”  
  
She rested her hands on the platform as the image of Reach fizzled away, replaced by the smaller and more ice-dominated form of Broker.  
  
“This information is, again, eyes-only classification. An underground operation is being settled to retake this smaller outer-colony planet. No military housing facilities have been established here, and the population is almost entirely civilian, which gives the UNSC reason to believe that the Covenant certainly has alternative motivations for hovering around its atmosphere. Whether or not they have passed through into landing has not yet been confirmed.”  
  
Korra shifted, and furrowed a brow. Bolin-348 seemed entirely intent and focused on the rotating hologram.  
  
Sparing a moment to clear her throat, all three pairs of eyes were fixed on her once more. It was appeasing.  
  
“Too many of our colonies have been jeopardized. Based on my understanding, Spartan forces will be spread throughout various colonies in an attempt to even weakened points within the planetary systems. Whatever the Covenant is looking for – we’re going to make sure that they do not get their hands on it. It’s insulting enough that members of the human race, the Insurrectionists, are _bartering_ with them on such severe borders.” The last point was pressed with more emotion than she intended.  
  
The AI on the smaller podium shot her a look that was a clear warning she was treading on unauthorized data for the ears of her charge, so she altered her course, swiping stray strands of hair back from her face.  
  
“When the rest of the group of Spartans is evacuated from this vessel, our course will be set for Broker, and you will be briefed. Stealth carriers have already penetrated the planet’s atmosphere to establish a temporary base, and a majority of your tasks will be fed from Command through radio.” Suyin once again approached the podium, and established a hand on Kuvira’s shoulder, effortlessly relieving her of the duty to brief while offering the soldiers before them a smile. She could sympathize with all of the sudden information being gifted.  
  
Kuvira dutifully stepped down, taking the documents that Suyin passed to her behind her back.  
  
 **CLASSIFIED** read across the folder in dark messy printing. Her palms began to sweat just handling the papers when it became known that the documents were ONI issued, even if the word “classified” was used a bit too freely when it came to their organization. Her gloves thankfully preserved their untainted condition, and the bundled was tucked beneath her arm before she gave a smart salute, and excused herself out the back door.  
  
“Alva, please close the hologram.  Open navigation ports, check the docking station, and tell the mess hall to begin preparation for a late dinner.” Suyin posed leniently, laying her arms on the podium as she leaned against it.  
  
“Consider it done.” The AI regarded her kindly, and blipped off of her own podium, disappearing to complete the assigned tasks as listed.  
  
“Permission for free-speech granted, but not lenient. If you have any questions, now is the time.”  
  
Bolin shot his hand up, with Korra quickly in tow.  
  
Suyin jabbed a finger in his direction respectively, awarding the male for his reflex.  
  
“Are all three of us going to the planet? Do we have other reinforcements? Are the other Spartans going to other planets? Are we –.”  
  
Her expression dimmed slightly, and Suyin was quick to cut him off, holding true to lackery-lenient speech. “Yes, you will be working as a joint unit, reinforcements are questionable at this point, and that information cannot be released at this moment in time, I suggest avoiding questions similar to it. Korra?”  
  
“I think – he kind of covered what I had in mind, for the most part. I’m not really sure what to ask. We’re departing tomorrow?”  
  
“The rest of the Spartans are boarding the Pelicans tomorrow, but we’re already close enough to the system that we can slip-space and be there within a few days’ time.”  
  
After a short pause with no further prompting, Suyin arched a brow, and looked pointedly at Mako, who twisted his expression for a moment, and folded his arms behind his back.  
  
“What part about this is eyes-only? We’re the ones going on it, and we’re receiving minimal intel. Or the wrong questions are being asked.”  
  
“The fact you are going on it is eyes-only classification. We might have a few suspected leaks throughout the lower quadrants that are freeing information to the Insurrectionist rebels. Since each separate mission is crucial to the larger piece, we want to keep as few mishaps as possible. I’m allowing you to ask questions to put rest to an over-worked mind. You’ve been fed a lot all throughout today. You’ll be filled in on the more appropriate details when we hit the orbital drop point of the planet.”  
  
Her explanation seemed to satisfy the trio, who exchanged reasoned glances once more, before repairing their posture.  
  
“If that’s all for now, then you’re dismissed to the mess hall. When the bell sounds at twenty-hundred, check in at the brig. Kuvira will be there to assign you to a bunker and supply you, as well as perform an armoury check. Maybe get you some busy work.”  
  
They saluted with no amount of untrained hesitance, and turned to exit towards the door.  
  
Suyin could practically hear the gears in their heads struggling to pull through the sudden drop of events as they padded off to fulfill given duties, no doubt favoured amongst them.  
  
Superbly honed abilities could be set to iron testing in the actual field.  
  
Success, however, was set to trial and error.


	2. Gaining Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Covenant is often seen as inconvenient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm putting so much research into this it's crazy.

“They just plucked you right up?”  
  
“No one was really stopping them. I mean, not adamantly, anyway. A doctor was explaining why they wanted me for the program specifically, since no one else around the area was being selected at all. They mentioned something about it being pertinent that I be isolated as early as possible, and how they still needed to evaluate me on a few things before it was even going to be solid. It was beyond confusing, and at first my parents didn’t even agree, but the doctor pulled them in for conversation that I couldn’t make out and that was that for me.”  
  
“It must’ve been – I don’t know, difficult?” Bolin worried through his choice in words through a mouthful of half salad, and half some kind of meat he wasn’t too concerned about identifying. He had even reached over to jab his plastic spork into Mako’s slab of meat who, easily enough, seemed to allow the advance on the only meal he had all day.  
  
A few green leaves that had clear origins had to be better than cramming the mystery flesh into his mouth.  
  
Bolin tried beforehand in vain to convince him that it tasted far better than their sense of smell would dare convey. But he wasn’t having any of the mediocre ushering.  
  
As if Bolin minded.  
  
Korra was stirring the plastic throughout the mess of potatoes. What had once been whole was thoroughly mashed and spread over a portion of the tray mindlessly. Her healthy appetite failed her for the evening.  
  
“I guess it was difficult. There’s a better term for it somewhere. But I was just – so _young_. It’s hard to remember what they sounded like now. When they took me up on that dropship, another one of the doctors looked a lot like my mom. I kind of came to associate the woman with her, so my mom’s face is a bit more memorable than my father’s. They’re just kind of fading, and I’m not hugely impacted by it. Not sure if I _should_ be or not.” She ended up rolling her shoulders in an uncomfortable shrug, stabbing instead of just churning the meal about.  
  
“I was told I would see them again. That hasn’t exactly happened throughout the approaching decade. They stopped contacting me, too.”  
  
“I thought every single one of the Spartans here were orphans,” Mako interjected, furrowing his brows in the process. Finished with his meal, he was leaning back in his seat, breaking from inspecting the side of his boot to make eye contact with their once-familiar squad mate. Years of separation had them fumbling to catch up on _a lot_.  
  
Fifteen minutes into the extended break of the mess hall, and Bolin was the primary source of conversation overall; a celebratory gesture towards their new status as a unit, and their reunion.  
  
The two couldn’t believe how much Korra had progressed and flourished since their first encounter at the initialization facility only a stray planetary system over from their position.  
  
Korra propped open her mouth, expression foreshadowing a bitter remark, when a hum over the intercom interrupted her, blaring into Kuvira’s quickly familiar tone. The no-nonsense edge held the room silent.  
  
“Your dinner has been cut short by unforeseen events. All Spartan personnel report to the floor beneath the bridge immediately.”  
  
Someone keyed the intercom to confirm that the order was received, and people began filing appropriately to scrap what they had not been able to get to; which was not much.  
  
Food rarely went unappreciated, unless one happened to become emotionally upset by the circumstances of their adoption into a military program, or disgusted by the vague contents of slimy meat.  
  
\- - -  
  
The tension in the room was suffocating, condensing.  
  
Korra tugged at the hem of her tanktop, and shifted restlessly on both feet.  
  
Bolin made a quick and discreet joke about the engineers in the hull adjusting the gravitational weight of the ship’s solo-orbitals in order to place emphasis on the “gravity of the situation”.  
  
As unsociable and inhuman as the Spartans were known to be, the joke offered was found to be incredibly amusing to several of the room’s occupants.  
  
When the service doors to the elevator parted, expressions were immediately orderly, and the rows of soldiers saluted to Kuvira, whose attention was primarily focused on a clip board held in her hands.  
  
No one awarded themselves the justification to relax from the salute until Kuvira returned the gesture, and moved to the front of the room, gracing the door they entered in with her presence by standing in front of it.  
  
Her eyes flowed down the board as she spoke, notably urgent but efficient.  
  
Korra had become quick to admire her withstanding ability for addressing people with formal speech in the short time period she had been on the vessel.  
  
Looking to Kuvira with unwavering attention, the glance that was thrown in the youth’s direction was hard to miss, and yet Korra found herself fumbling under the severity of those abyss-driven eyes.  
  
There was little wonder why so many bent beneath her charge, even without an outstanding rank.  
  
“Our slipspace coordinates have been compromised by a Covenant vessel _within_ FLEETCOM Sector One. Last visual report was not too far from Tantalus.”  
  
The brunette caught her sliding stare from appropriate attention, onto to how the leader’s lips moved about in conveying the information.  
  
She took a concerning breath, and redirected her frivolous attention.  
  
“As most of you are aware, this is only a little beyond ten and a half light years from Earth’s solar system, and far less so from Reach. Under the exception of Cole Protocol, our position is currently deemed too close to our core world relative locations, and we are authorized to temporarily postpone the exclusion of Spartan forces from this facility and beyond this system.”  
  
Kuvira earned herself some slight smiles from various soldiers privately celebrating the postpone of their separation. The primal duty of salvation in the face of a real Covenant threat allowed the atmosphere to retain its heavy influence.  
  
Kuvira stopped roaming her gaze along the clip board, and settled it in one hand, clasping them loosely behind her back as she shifted her weight onto one foot.  
  
Perceptive as the super-soldiers were, many identified the action with thinning patience and a worried mind.  
  
Korra tried to find the wall across from her more dignifying and interesting to _stare_ at. The buzz-cut female who stood in front of said wall only quirked a brow at her, being mistaken for an object of attention as well.  
  
So she traced her eyes along the reflective metal of Kuvira’s shoulder pad instead. Effort was placed into recalling the exact scripted order of the Cole Protocol, aside from the generality of being an absolute resort to Humanity’s last standing home planet in the face of annihilation at the hands of an advanced race.  
  
The era was progressing so nicely.  
  
When Kuvira stalled, as she often seemed to do throughout her briefing in that particular day, concentrated on the space directly in front of herself, an individual down the line raised a hand to recall her attention. He was given clearance.  
  
“How are we _compromised_? Is the ship trailing us?”  
  
“We don’t know yet. There is no visual confirmation, aside from a blip signal in our previous stream. Currently, your departure is still scheduled for later tomorrow or even the next twenty-four hour period, but you will be separating out into two groups instead of the previous assortments, excerpt from the three listed as prime occupants. Admiral Roland requests a certain number of you to be transferred to Tantalus. As soon as this is completed, and we lose the vessel plausibly tracking us, _this_ vessel’s path is clear for destination. The lower rankings aboard are not privy to this information. If you share any of this at all, I will have no choice but to report you to a Special Forces branch official.”  
  
The statement was ended with a few direct and pointed looks, getting the message across strongly where discretion was needed.  
  
Korra thought, with a smile, that the Lieutenant looked twice at Bolin.  
  
A door down a perpendicular hall opened, and a disheveled Crewman stepped in, frantically looking down the row, and then up it before spotting Kuvira, and rushing towards her, speaking with just as much urgency as his wild eyes offered.  
  
“Lieutenant, they’ve spotted her heat signature again, a few hundred kilometers from the gas giant. It’s advancing.”  
  
“Get everyone ready in case we’re dogged. Spartans, uniform.”  
  
The soldiers buckled into action as immediately as the order was processed, wasting no time moving down the line into the preparation hangar.  
  
Kuvira leaned for the nearest of the trio beneath her charge, ending up with a tight but brief purchase on Korra’s forearm. In as much urgency as the rest of the room moved about in, she was tugging the Spartan with surprising brawn towards the Captain’s Bridge.  
  
The youthful brunette’s brows threatened to hit her hairline. She was a _Spartan_. She could lift three times her extended body weight with minimized effort. Another normal human soldier could throw their whole weight against her, and she would hardly budge.  
  
After her augmentation, she had mistakenly killed an officer who was unfortunate enough to be ordered to spar with her new, uncoordinated abilities.  
  
But there Kuvira was, dragging her along, barking something about the three needing to follow her.  
  
As if realizing her show in commandeering strength, Kuvira snapped her hand away moments after adjusting Korra’s walking path, and smoothed her trajectory as she slid past the entrance door to the stairs that led to the Bridge.  
  
Mako and Bolin were both so fiercely on her trail that the shock had to deal with being short lived.  
  
Kuvira punched in a code that parted the doors, and upon stepping out, Korra became awash with contemporary bouts of discomposure and bewilderment.  
  
Every single wall had a screen and one or two occupants that were fiercely working with some sort of coding. The individuals to the left, particularly, were working with a type of more simple calculus. Or, it could have been complex algebra. Korra made a face at being ushered forward by the side of Mako’s intrusive foot.  
  
A broader screen stood just past the silver railing that ringed the circular platform of the bridge that the three were led to. It showed stars, a dismal gas giant, and a smaller square percentage specified the fusion reactor and engine status.  
  
So much to take in all at once, certainly for a first time seeing the array in the middle of a potential crisis.  
  
The three saluted the Captain, who was so busy in discussion with Suyin, that he hardly seemed to give fair recognition to their arrival.  
  
Kuvira was not kind or attentive enough to dismiss them immediately from the action, and so they stood at attention for several minutes before the Captain turned in their general direction to address Kuvira, and then, with concentration strained upon a multitude of different things, vaguely dismiss the trio’s integrated posture.  
  
Aside from the lowered voices of Suyin and Captain Bataar, Korra could make out the primary engines of the _Zaofu_ sputtering until they slowed down dramatically. Inertia kept them moving forward towards whatever initial direction they had planned for.  
  
“Arm the MAC capacitors, but _do not_ prep them to fire yet.” Suyin ordered, nodding Kuvira towards her.  
  
“Permission to speak?” Korra ventured, easing herself up the walkway a bit further.  
  
“Denied.”  
  
Well fine then.  
  
She went sour as Suyin fed her Lieutenant with orders for navigation and stealth lines for escaping the heat signature that was advancing on them.  
  
Beside her, Mako and Bolin seemed wholly unable to keep still, within reason.  
  
They were trained to _act_ under pressured circumstances of engagement, not stand there and take notes on the interactions between commissioned officers.  
  
Kuvira seemed just as uncomfortable and shifty, however, in spite of the fact she was being given constructive things to do about the situation at hand.  
  
Wasn’t she ground-force, like Suyin?  
  
Korra could sympathize with her in that. It didn’t matter how many layers of Titanium-A she was behind, or how far away from Covenant cruisers she was. Up in space was the bottom-line least safe place the female believed she would find herself. Powerful feet on the ground and forces at her back were something she would not trade for all of the smudgy nebulas and endless dark matter in the known universe.  
  
Even water could be fought against, like that on her icy home planet. Its heavy embrace was both condemning and uplifting.  
  
What was she supposed to do with vast nothingness?  
  
Her roaming line of sight promptly became focused on a discreet motioning, and she came to awareness that Kuvira was beckoning with a single quirked finger at her – oh, at all three of them – and they responded in similar segments of awareness by surging forward, eager with what they could do to aid.  
  
“I need you three to run some quick calculations on the coordinates as they appear on the screen. Our “dumb” AI can only run so many figures on the ship. Think of this as a standard evaluation for your potential positions.”  
  
Some particular weight was settled on the last two words, causing Korra to press her lips into a line.  
  
Korra was terrible at math. Terrible in the aspect that advanced organic chemistry instructions during her pre-augmentation days with an AI instructor made her want to leap out the window and be put through another treetop obstacle course in a hail storm.  
  
The looks she got from the other two did not suggest that they were anything akin to prodigy either.  
  
So in the least, they offered Kuvira their understanding, and commenced on highly collaborative figuring and re-checking one another’s results.  
  
“We’ve got visual confirmation,” one of the second-lieutenants claimed.  
  
Kuvira approached them, and extended the blipmap they were stationed at, tapping on the established location amongst various stars where its dark outline had been spotted.  
  
“Dim the lights. I want a positive classification on it immediately,” Suyin approached from behind Kuvira as the latter began zooming in and brushing up clearance, narrowing her eyes to pick out the details of the ship.  
  
Korra dropped from her calculations, making the discreet effort of leaning forward to get a better look at the display.  
  
Across from her, she noticed Bolin’s eyes light up the moment he glanced back in her direction from his own gawking of the screen.  
  
Two hands propped themselves down on the sheets that held their calculations, and Korra jerked her head to the side quickly enough to cause a twinge in her neck.  
  
Beside her, a female whose first name read as “Opal” on her tag offered her a charmingly friendly smile, confiscating the pen from Korra’s hand while nudging her off with a shoulder.  
  
“Go check it out, I have this for you.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it. Feel free to drop me feedback for continuing or improvement.


	3. Gradual Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many things are mused over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to really thank those of you who have supported me on this so far. Seriously, the comments were really appreciated, and urged me to progress this. Throw me some more critique it jumpstarts my creativity. Hoping to start dishing out longer chapters after this, but they won't be updated quite as quickly.  
> All I've done is write lately.

“It’s a Heavy Corvette.”  
  
“Not a Stealth?”  
  
“It’s an SDV-Class. If it were a Stealth Corvette, I don’t think we would be registering it until it would be too late.”  
  
Kuvira had meant the remark as more of a joke, not intentionally snide.  
  
But when Su threw her a slightly dirty look that suggested she was under no amount of proper mood for any light-heartedness, the Lieutenant’s gaze stooped to the floor for a moment with what Korra believed to be shouldered hurt or regret, and she stumbled her way back into more favourable ground as quickly as she could manage by reaching up and tracing her finger along the visible purple glimmer of the alien ship’s hull on the see-through hologram screen.  
  
It looked more like an insect carapace than actual metallic armour to Korra, who was standing back respectfully, but remaining wholly focused on the vague image that sent a creeping tingle of uncertainty up her spine. She had no seasoned idea how Kuvira identified the parts of it so fluidly.  
  
“It has three bulbous sections here, and this hull probably houses the plasma. There’s also no reflective shield in these models.”  
  
“So if we decide to hit it,” Su surmised, folding her arms and throwing a glance to the Captain. “Then we’ll actually have a chance at doing damage, instead of having things just pepper it uselessly.”  
  
“Their heavy plasma cannons and pulse lasers would cause explosive decompression on impact.” Bataar was pacing on the bridge, looking over blueprints to their construct to reason out an offensive perimeter while repetitively adjusting his glasses. “If they hit towards the reactor, it would catch fire, and we would need to vent the atmosphere. That puts too many lives at risk for no reason at the moment.”  
  
“We won’t openly engage them then, but we _need_ to lose them.” Suyin paced back in Bataar’s direction, looking over the paper documents he was concerning himself with.  
  
“They’re usually sent in advance of larger fleets, aren’t they?” Opal had spoken up unhindered. Not many would get away with doing so under the circumstances. Being fortunate enough to have a mother at the Brigadier General rank _and_ a father as Captain within the room helped out with influence. “Shouldn’t we be sending out a distress beacon?”  
  
“No one would pick it up in time if we chose to simply let inertia carry us along in favour of the _plausible_ idea that without the engines, the ship cannot follow us as easily,” Suyin claimed, so heavy in thought she sounded borderline hostile over the idea. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to put stress on their own ship’s gravity wells for slipspace, especially any of the smaller dropships, which would be the only ones able to answer the beacon promptly. Even so, it would take them a while to get on approximate location. We’re a heavy enough cruiser to be on our own out here to begin with.”  
  
Bataar shrugged, and closed the data table on his cooling engines. “Speaking as if anyone could have expected Covenant out _here_. The fact it’s a lone vessel – well, that’s unsettling to say the least.”  
  
A weighted silence strained on the fabric of conversation shot back and forth. Those who did not bother with pertinent commands, such as keeping the major systems running, maintained their attention on the Captain.  
  
Instead of dealing a finalized series of commands, he turned to Suyin.  
  
“What do you want to do?”  
  
“We don’t have the _time_ to make a slip into Shaw-Fujikawa space if the Spartans are being transferred tomorrow. A short jump could take up to a month,” Kuvira offered. She had stepped into a more personal habit of worrying the edge of her lip with her teeth. It was barely noticeable, and she only stopped when she caught Korra staring her down cumbersomely over it. “ _And_ , the Cole Protocol states that we need to activate a selective purge on any data about our planetary networks. If were indeed to retreat into slipstream, our vectors would need to be at random, severely capping our time span to get these Spartans mobile.”  
  
“Bataar Jr.,” the Captain addressed, “get on and start collecting the files for database purging. If the ship gets any closer than twenty percent of what it’s already at, delete the files and activate the system’s drowning.”  
  
Su debated the resorts briefly, as if she had already churned, tasted, and charged the idea. She spoke with clear authority, rising up from where she had settled a hand on the table to still her incessant pacing. Looking to Opal, and then swiping her gaze over the rest of the attentive crew, she finalized her wishes.  
  
“Head for the gravity well of the nearest planet that is not strictly civilian-occupied.  We’re going to lose them there. If all else fails, then we can try the beacon. I am _not_ allowing this ship to be captured or sliced open for their prying hands.”  
  
“Hold on –.”  
  
Kuvira broadened the screen, eyes intent and searching.  
  
Suyin was quick to come up behind her, attempting to nudge the curious and resilient darker-skinned Spartan to the side so she could catch a clear visual.  
  
“I think it’s changing its course now. The hull there is broadening – it’s turning on its side.”  
  
“Well, we know for certain that it noticed us then. Why it isn’t coming after us is beyond me. Start writing down a report of what it’s doing, and relay important information over the comm. I believe we should _straighten_ our path back to our original direction. Forfeit the planet for now.” Su shared a look with the Captain, who in turn, after an almost telepathic conversation shown by mere looks between them, ordered that the engines be turned back on at forty percent power to get them moving.  
  
The dismal hum came back to encroach upon any broken silence between orders. The immediate jump into forty percent of the engines caused enough of a jolt that those standing were compromised if they did not brace in their positions.  
  
Previously dimmed lights flickered to life, and the ship’s systems were being re-checked by Second Lieutenants and Crewmen as necessary.  
  
“Let’s keep them in our side view, don’t let our backs fall entirely on them. You three –.” Kuvira’s eyes settled on the space Opal occupied where Korra was in turn missing.  
  
Bolin was looking _pointedly_ in the opposing direction that Mako’s quick glance and slight pursing of lips suggested.  
  
A roaming peer of brevity, and Spartan-557’s location was revealed.  
  
The brunette stood slightly bent over, knee braced into the chair someone abandoned while her hands and face were pressed into an open circular ported window near the east of the ship.  
  
Kuvira mused with some amount of imagination, that the irregularly muscled and intimidating _Spartan_ looked more akin to a child squishing themselves up against a tank at an aquarium.  
  
Hadn’t she seen enough endless space in her lifetime?  
  
When the Lieutenant approached the soldier, and rapped knuckles against her forearm, the female of accusation shot away from the glass, eyebrows knit with not astonishment, or awe, but flexed worry. The reaction stopped Kuvira from admonishing her on shirking a previous direct order, regardless to circumstance. Instead, she was leaning to catch an eye for what had disarmed the Spartan’s mentality with _what do you see?_ stalled on her tongue.  
  
“It’s slip-jumping,” she heard Korra murmur, as a bright outer ring of circulating energy began tearing open the bundle of seven dimensions around the penetrating nose of the lengthy Covenant vessel an inconsiderable distance from their own vessel. The gaping maw of intertwined spacial dimensions offered the mass transit from the scene, into the void beyond.  
  
Kuvira responded by whirling fast on her heel and alerting the Bei Fong Captain in urgency of the development in the Covenant’s new and sudden course.  
  
The shutter windows of the navigation were opened to get a better, more direct visual than what the hologram seemed to be offering them.  
  
Aside from the dismal smudges and prickles of stars and a bluish nebula, the bright white light of the slipspace rim that circled the void that the Covenant vessel was introducing itself to was the most unmistakable force of energy to greet their eyes.  
  
Holograms failed to justify the intensity of the light that reflected off of the dismal threat of the alien ship in such a grotesquely beautiful manner.  
  
The appreciation of the beauty, in itself, was perhaps a soft betrayal to the collectively losing struggle of humanity. Yet everyone within the room stood in appraisal as bluish green lines danced along the form of the mauve ship in its descent.  
  
The anti-climactic disappearance of the vessel that once held everyone on the edge of their seat over their fate in deep space left the soldiers with bated breath and a sheen on the surface of their visible skin.  
  
Bataar slouched for a moment against the side of a console, and then sat down in a seat to capture his bearings. The weight of terror at sighting such a decimating ship near as close a proximity as it had been at only reigned stronger in the passing of the moment.  
  
In the midst of action, the experienced learned to bravely bolt down the more primal urges of their trepidation.  
  
With the threat passing so unexpectedly, the whole room spared time for a more proper breath.  
  
Suyin began checking and re-checking the camera array that once showed the vague outline of where the ship loomed. No indication remained that it was still there, aside from its draining heat signature.  
  
Korra was left feeling sick and light-headed after the encounter.  
  
\---  
  
The emotional condition of the vessel had not changed hours after.  
  
The officers that had boldly stood on their feet working beyond a twenty-four hour period of searching and data collection were finally allowed reprieve of their weary minds.  
  
Cheap coffee, the last few boxes of luxury, was being offered a few levels down. A new shipment of supplies was supposed to arrive with the extraction of the other soldiers.  
  
What thick-glassed eyes, open to the depths beyond their little hold of light and life amongst nothing that there were, were soon shut. Metal trimmed against heavy-duty windows, signaling a lock down for the falsified night.  
  
Some eyes refused to close.  
  
Such as the ones currently scrutinizing every viable inch of the Spartan that stood without much energy or liveliness that had firstly been presented upon their meeting.  
  
Her eyes weren’t as void and inky dull as they initially seemed beneath the dim lights of a vessel on reserved power. They were a flourishing and youthful dark green. How Korra had ever mistaken such a lovely feature, as observant and sensitive to details as her augmentation had caused her to be, was beyond her.  
  
But she got a fair look at them, for all of the instances that Kuvira, oddly predatory in her study, had circled back in front of her.  
  
“You should cut your hair. You _need_ to cut your hair.” Kuvira finally said, stopping before her with an excellent posture and cocking her head at a slight angle.  
  
Military born and raised.  
  
Korra, along with a dismal sickness that lasted since the unconventional encounter of the foreign vessel, felt slightly self-conscious over the gesture.  
  
Why she did was not entirely apparent to herself. She had been scrutinized, studied, and judged since her forced adoption into the program, years ago.  
  
She willed herself more presently than anything to be allowed to slink into her given room, like Mako and Bolin had been allowed to do after they easily passed whatever inspection Kuvira was obligated to perform.  
  
With fears and apprehensions of the established twenty-four hour period of a so-called “day” dissipating, weariness was left to claim throne.  
  
When Korra allowed herself a measure of comfort in debating the bed that awaited her, not managing a reply to the statement in the process, Kuvira offered more relaying opinion.  
  
“You’re short for a Spartan. Your hair – as long as it is – also looks relatively healthy. How long ago was your augmentation?”  
  
Korra wrinkled her nose slightly. “Am I even allowed to tell you that? I can’t – I mean, a specific time that it was _all_ done?”  
  
“Are you _still adjusting_?” The elder woman’s easy tone gained an edge, and Korra did her best to refrain from anything similar to an eye roll, or any other sign of disrespect that her urging personality merited.  
  
The people – doctors and physicians – she spent her augmentation with were adjusted to her personality. She functioned relatively well with them, if one ignored Tenzin’s often crazed protests over all of the excessively exuberant things she wanted to attempt when the surgical procedures of the augmentation were done.  
  
“Sometimes if I’m not careful, I still smack myself in the face when I’m saluting, because I forget that I can move a lot faster than I used to.”  
  
“That’s not a very direct answer.”  
  
“Shouldn’t _you_ cut your hair? Your braid hits your hip. That seems a little bit dangerous and unstandardized.”  
  
“My hair is none of your business. _Your_ hair, however, is _my_ business, along with your physical wellness after your augmentation. I would recommend, Spartan-55 –.”  
  
“ _Korra_.”  
  
She noted the slow, heavy rise and the slow, heavy fall of the Lieutenant’s chest plate in some liable effort to maintain control.  
  
Korra allowed herself a lopsided smirk, and positioned herself more leniently. So much for upholding respect.  
  
“If you think you’re being cute, you’re _not_. I don’t know how you ever got away with this behaviour in whatever facility you just came from, but let me get something clear with you.”  
  
“Kuvira, can I have a word with you for a moment?”  
  
Kuvira started at the alternative tone intruding into the conversation. Throwing a look over her shoulder to show that Suyin gained her attention, she shortly returned to Korra with a more severe one that actually had the Spartan struggling not to cringe or slouch beneath its pressure.  
  
“Yes, _of course_ , I’ll be right there. You’re _dismissed_ for a fifteen hour period of recuperation from your arrival. You will meet me at o’seven hundred on Thursday with the rest of your unit.”  
  
With that, Korra was left to her own devices, thankful towards the pristine moment of Suyin’s intervention.  
  
Timing could not have been more favourable for her.  
  
After picking herself up from the day, and finally allowing her back to connect with the mattress-like material, her mind was not immediately awarded with sleep.  
  
The Spartan’s hazed mind drizzled lazily from opinions about her new given superior; how faintly _endearing_ her dedication was. Endearing being the only word she could draw up that was not entirely misplaced or even awkward to name.  
  
She debated her augmentation, trying to draw up exactly _when_ they had adapted her body into the process, and how long it would take her to be fully comfortable in her own body.  
  
She debated how many lost a chance at life because of the process.  
  
How, despite the fact that seventy of them had been assigned for the _second_ wave of the program (because a first was clearly not enough), twenty eight of them survived, thirty three of them died as a result of the procedure, and nine of them were crippled or disfigured or missing entirely.  
  
She thought about how powerful she felt and how eager to serve she was, in spite of her lacking appreciation for authority.  
  
Humanity was in her hands, and she never felt so prepared to _win_ in her whole life, in spite of the scare hours prior with the first _live_ ship she had ever laid eyes on.  
  
A dismal reckoning, a forewarning of thunder to the coming storm of the war.  
  
And then her mind roamed further beyond into the happenings of her life that were never intended to be roamed upon with a frayed mind. The strained recollection of her family figures, the doctor who introduced her to the program, her boot camp instructor, the friends made and lost and retrieved.  
  
Her purpose and role within the vast struggle of a cosmos opened up to the prying ignorant eyes of Humanity.  
  
When her thoughts became blurs of suspicions and recollections and theories, her mind fuzzed into tiredness at last, and those thoughts narrowed into the commanding touch of the very human Lieutenant who managed to, in succession, haul her back from one direction and into another.  
  
Somehow. Despite contending with the will of a Spartan, whose strength still had many issues to work out.  
  
Korra was not, in fact, attempting to be cute when admitting that she had slapped herself in the face during a hasty salute more than once, where lifting her arm did not demand nearly as much attention from her muscles as it used to.  
  
The reaction by which Kuvira offered was amusing.  
  
Korra, in spite of the pressing weight of her thoughts, found herself smiling slightly. For a reason, akin to the vast majority of the rest of her thoughts that crossed her unfortunate mind, that escaped her.  
  
When her mind dwindled back into the domestic analyzing of her interactions over the course of the day, she was numbed into a blissed slumber to scrap and rise for the next.  
  
\---  
  
She woke up to a dark interior.  
  
When the system recognized the alertness and the movement of her eyes, it switched on soft lights that would gradually lighten as she moved about and registered herself back into the waking world.  
  
When Korra tapped at the digital clock, it kindly and vocally informed her that it had been a full twelve hours since she had last been awake.  
  
She sat back down on the cot, rubbed at the side of her jaw, and estimated a three hour time span until she needed to report in.  
  
To where?  
  
Kuvira had not given her precise instructions. But the ship was not as extensive as a city thankfully, and she was sure she could cut in twenty minutes to half an hour of asking around random enlisted soldiers for the whereabouts of the officer.  
  
After Korra spent more of her time lounging around her bed until the “dumb” AI system informed her that she’s squandering away more time than recommended after her extensive rest, she pulled on cargo pants and another tank top before power walking her way down a few hallways into the supply room.  
  
It felt good to be mobile with her own time again.  
  
When Bolin walked in on her, she was busy squeezing into a form-fitting polymer body suit armour replicator.  
  
Despite the fact no severe sealed-vacuum environment mission rest on her shoulders, the data pad given to her upon her arrival to the vessel relayed the order that all personnel were to gear up in the form-fitting armour as soon as the opportunity became available to them. It was probably simply for trial reasons.  
  
She felt it go very cold, and then very warm, before it began adapting and conforming to her body temperature.  
  
Technology just kept getting better.  
  
Was _she_ considered technology too?  
  
A large hand clamped down on her shoulder pad, and Korra started to the side, bumping an array of lockers and denting a few in the process. Whoops.  
  
Bolin immediately put his hands back up in an action of surrendering apology on suspecting the off-chance that Korra might return with physical payback. “Woah, I just wanted to see how it felt. I barely checked my email registry ten minutes ago about the things.”  
  
Korra, fist wound back slightly to confirm Bolin’s suspicions, dropped her risen guard, and began to tug at the material around her thigh, adjusting the polymer where it fit awkwardly.  
  
“Could use adjustments in a few places. But, seriously, it’s basically one size fits all. I notice they’ve also clipped off some of the armour on these issues to make them easier to move in.”  
  
“What’s the point of even wearing them then?” Bolin holds his up, bushy brows furrowed deeply as he turns it different ways.  
  
“They could be setting us up for an atmosphere clearing later? Maybe they want us to get used to them or test them out more. They can’t have us running around in the MJOLNIR Four power armour. That stuff costs a ship and then some.”  
  
“I heard they’re trying to come out with another upgrade or something.” Bolin stifles a yawn, shoving a leg into the wrong side, and then trying again.  
  
At least the lack of armour made the suits easier to put them on themselves without needing several different assistants.  
  
Korra thumbed along the dents in the locker she created. A regular soldier might have had to kick it a few times to get it to dent slightly. She felt like she had just barely knocked against it. Clearly, not material originally designed for Spartan use like the lockers on their base on Reach had been.  
  
It suddenly felt less homely. But home was a very abstract, very trivial consideration that was just as much wistful thinking on her part as it was on Bolin’s for desiring a Mark V upgrade in armour.  
  
Perhaps his wistfulness was more realistic.  
  
Rather than offering her opinion, Korra shrugged, and reached for the helmet nearest to her, churning it this way and that before plunking it onto her head.  
  
A circular HUD showed up on the left hand of the screen when it powered on. A small little obstacle for the wide range of sight that she was given. Blue in colour with a cobalt ring around the HUD’s circumference, a hairline of light ebbed out from her position on the radar, periodically scanning the area.  
  
When Bolin stood, and began moving around in the bodysuit he managed to get on, a little yellow blip marked his position of movement, clarifying him an ally on the field. Motion detectors and thermal sensors were a go, Korra mused, thinking it to be _thee coolest damn thing_ amongst all things she had yet to be introduced to despite the time she had served.  
  
What was next? Replication of Covenant ship’s abilities to meld into their surroundings and become invisible? Integration of that into the suits?  
  
She was salivating a bit too much with that kind of technological thinking.  
  
So she pulled the helmet off, and set it to the side, sated with her trial-run of the helmet they would perhaps, at some point, be utilizing more in the field.  
  
The email attachment specified bodysuits only, or she might have kept it on and played around a little more.  
  
Bolin reached for it after she set it to the side, and began churning it in his hands, as if estimating whether or not he could fit it over his head without failing and embarrassing himself.  
  
Instead of that suspicion, Korra was met with a question he had apparently been considering instead.  
  
“What do you think of Kuvira?”  
  
Korra bit at her thumbnail, before she picked up a foot, set it on the edge of the bench she occupied, and began retying the laces along her boot.  
  
“She seems talented and really know-how for her rank and age. She isn’t the in-your-face screaming type. Which is really past bothering us at this point, but still.”  
  
“There seems to be something a little off about her though.”  
  
“ _Off_?” Korra raised an eyebrow at him, more interested then at what he had to say, since the conversation veered away from her own opinion about their acting commander.  
  
“Yeah, just a bit. The way she behaves around the higher-ups, and I noticed when she –.”  
  
“Are you almost done in here?”  
  
The whole ship had a serious problem with interruptions.  
  
When Mako poked his head around the corner, Korra faltered her irritable look, and Bolin seemed to understand that conversation was going to come to a halt for that moment in time.  
  
He stood, stretched lengthily, and approached his brother, offering some profound wisdom over how tight the suit was in unnecessary areas.  
  
Mako didn’t seem to share the same concerns as his brother, and nudged them aside in favour of the more urgent announcement that the _coffee and tea were almost out_.  
  
Korra accented this with an over-blown scandalized gasp, before contradictorily-calmly walking past the two and informing them about the few hours left before they would need to scour for the Lieutenant.  
  
With Bolin’s more legitimately scandalized opinion over the limits on the beverages, the three made a stop in the mess hall, which was surprisingly lacking in the company of Crewmen.  
  
A quick scan relayed that only a group of engineers occupied a corner table, musing over their coffees and complaining about some sort of nuclear repair over a D cell engine block – whatever.  
  
Korra’s interest was lost when her hands found the remaining labels on tea and sweeteners that were entirely natural resources from Arcadia. How exotic.  
  
It was a luxury that was not afforded to her on her previous vessel; the twenty plus labels that were at her disposal to choose from, not the lack of tea and coffee entirely.  
  
She hummed in contentment, leaning back against the table to fully appreciate what time she had left before she would be thrown back into the day to day chaotic action.  
  
The dim lights were easy on her eyes, the water for the tea was warm, and the conversation of the friends beside her was a comfort that had been once taken for granted, and missed after far too long.  
  
When the officers, passing glances to the group of Spartans now and then, evacuated the room to retreat to their duties when it became known that, yes, the Spartans _were_ able to hear them and yes, the unkind comments _were_ offensive at a stabbing angle, said Spartans occupied the table.  
  
A deck of cards and some flattened bottle caps being used as some form of makeshift chips had been left behind.  
  
Instead of playing cards, the three spun the makeshift chips back and forth between one another.  
  
It was a nice test of timing and strength control while they idled their focus.  
  
“Lin contacted the service deck. They aren’t too far off, but they’re still delayed from retrieving the others,” Mako started, offering casual bearings at conversation.  
  
An hour down, a couple more to go.  
  
Korra felt like her brain was dribbling out of her ears from the lack of mental stimulation.  
  
Back in her bunker, back _home_ , she was given chemistry assortments to work through, even if she sucked at math it was something to _work with_. Something to tackle and show off to her superiors if she came out successful and on top.  
  
What could she tackle and prove here?  
  
There was always a wrestle of playful wits against Kuvira, as brief as it had been the first time. Something told her that trying to press that wasn’t going to turn out favourable for her.  
  
Mako was looking at her in the way that gave her the impression that someone had just told him something incredibly disregarding.  
  
She realized she hadn’t responded, and gave a sort of a hum for him to continue.  
  
“I thought about requesting to leave with the rest of the company, and work under Lin.”  
  
Bolin promptly choked on the coffee he had. Korra missed the chip she was about to easily pass back, and dropped her jaw open.  
  
“Just a thought,” he amended quickly. “She usually works in a pretty – well, relatively close system to Suyin. I’m specifically _assigned_ here, so I doubt they would even fulfill the request. They need help over there, and I’ve worked with Lin before. It’s a little bit awkward and tense here too.”  
  
“Awkward doesn’t justify any part of that.” Maybe it did, just a bit, she reasoned.  
  
But they had been reunited for hardly a twenty-four hour period, and she had stepped past her own awkward harbouring in that time period to _enjoy_ the time reunited. Whatever Mako could not seem to get passed, Korra could not figure.  
  
Things seemed just fine to her initially.  
  
“And you wouldn’t _just_ be working under Lin, you’d have Raiko to deal with.” Bolin had stood up from his seat, and promptly thrown himself into being highly expressive with his arms and hands.  
  
Mako tucked himself to the side in order to avoid being smacked.  
  
When Korra leaned across the table with concentration, he figured he _was_ going to get smacked around regardless.  
  
“It’s _just a thought_! We were told they wanted us spread thin, but now they’re trying to just separate us into two groups? Except us three? If some of us don’t stand up for the betterment in that, there’s going to be imbalance. People _need_ Spartans now. It’s not just the Insurrectionist rebels we’re dealing with here anymore.”  
  
“Then let someone else push their luck. You don’t always need to be the one who steps up to everything. I don’t even think it would work like that. There’s too few of us to send off alone at the beckoning call of every damn security ship.”  
  
“To be fair, The Republic is a pretty _huge_  and successful vessel. But I guess so is this one.” Bolin, beginning to see a bit more reason, had stopped making wild hand gestures, but remained complacent in his standing.  
  
Korra looked like she was going to go after him next.  
  
A soft beep on the datapad at 557’s hip was kind enough to let her know that they still had a lengthy amount of time before they would need to actually seek Kuvira out. But trying to avoid a double kill on her hands, she picked it up as a conveniently-timed excuse.  
  
Mako was happy to oblige to the excuse of needing to seek her out before they ended up late.  
  
The chips and cards were condemned to remain on the table, and the three stalked around, pulling aside Crewmen for informal and brief interrogations – Bolin kindly requesting if any of them had seen a Lieutenant Kuvira – while maintaining a tense silence between themselves.  
  
One crew member had a reasonable idea where the Lieutenant had gone. She pointed to the stairwell, and gave such profoundly clear direction that Korra wanted to hug her after all of the lacking success.  
  
But she settled for a salute, because every more primal fiber of her being screamed at her to do so instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was worried about some canonical facts in this. But then I realized that Halo canon sometimes ignores other Halo canon.


	4. Transfer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the continued support on this, it certainly keeps me going. I wanted to make this chapter longer, but I also wanted to mark it off at a reasonable spot and real life events are taking a lot out of me.   
> Things are still slow in this chapter. I want to get into heavier things in the next chapter, so this one is just more basic establishing.

Down a couple flights and through the door on the left, the trio was greeted with a training room slightly more advanced than the common room another three flights _above_ their descent.   
  
Korra eyed the weights like they were no one else’s business.  
  
A brief peek around the room, and the Lieutenant was spotted a few meters away, adorned in a similar black body suit and trying to work herself into a comfortable split position.  
  
The brunette gave her props for that.  
  
Mako saluted, follow in suit by the other two after a moment, and he proceeded to announce their presence.   
  
“Spartans four-four-one, three-four-eight, and five-five-seven, all present and prepped to receive orders.”  
  
Kuvira, entirely delved into the private development of her own mind amidst machinery and the solace of a once-empty room, seemed to have missed the three Spartans’ entry.  
  
Kuvira, startled by this, whirled her upper half harshly enough to send her braid curling across to the next shoulder. Each bare foot was planted against a parallel beam, holding her up in the spread position that she was then wavering within in an attempt to maintain her compromised pose.  
  
When a vibrant pink became apparent on her skin, it was evident that she had certainly not expected a single one of them to arrive before the absolute designated time period. Or, she forgot about the designated time. The latter seemed less likely.  
  
Korra could not bite down any more of a smile than Bolin could.  
  
She looked more youthful when not adorned with so much bulky armour and surely-straight attention.  
  
“You’re early,” the Lieutenant finally managed, working to clear any disturbed assets on her expression.  
  
“We know,” Mako responded matter-of-factly.  
  
Kuvira let a slight smile – a legitimate looking one at that – quirk the edge of her lip in spite of the lingering pinked embarrassment.   
  
It made Korra uncomfortable in a way that she was incapable of identifying. Spartans were not renowned for an ability in emotional recognition. She would list the ranks of Covenant Jackals ten times over in perfection before she would sit down and mull her _feelings_ , certainly so if they were unfamiliar to her.  
  
She began pulling at the tight material at her thigh again to give her hands something reasonable to do while her eyes excused themselves from the form of the superior who was in the equally graceful process of getting down from the coordinated position.  
  
Kuvira seemed to follow where her eyes subconsciously fell, and confirmed what the Lieutenant believed to be Korra’s course of thought.  
  
“You’re hitting the weights today. You’ve been decommissioned for too long here. The doctors on board are concerned that your process has a chance of being inhibited if you don’t maintain the work effort. Luckily only a few days out of practice shouldn’t do much, if any damage at all.”  
  
“I tried the ones in the gym already,” Bolin started, plucking one of the cables on a pull machine. “The max weight they have is still too light.”  
  
“That’s why you’re _here_ and not _there_. This is a higher gee set.”  
  
Stretching herself out a bit more, the Lieutenant approached one of the work benches near a series of different dumbbells, gesturing to the seat. “Five-five-seven, sit.”  
  
Should she be rolling over too? Of course she would if it were asked of her, she reminded herself. There was a difference between the mere flaw of personality that she maintained and straight defiance or rebellion. Kuvira was still a Lieutenant. Curiosity won over any disrespectful intent, and the brunette plodded over, sitting where instructed.  
  
Kuvira ducked beside her to glance at the various weight settings, before looking the Spartan over with judgmental intensity.  
  
“Pick up the fifty pound bar.”  
  
Korra did, and frowned. It was far too light. She balanced it in her hand for a moment and gave it a showy twirl.  
  
“Now try the one hundred. That’s going to be your standard in here.”  
  
Again, she reached over for the indicated bell, and heaved it up with more of a measure of difficulty, but not so much she was entirely incapable of picking it up with one arm.  
  
 _That_ felt proper. She was rewarded with a smile from the Lieutenant that made her only more eager to appeal to order.  
  
“Before you get on those, you’ll be going through the series of stretches that are listed on the board over there. After you move through and complete each of these machines, you’re going to do some light sparring, and after that you’re due a protein meal.” Kuvira went through the motions of assigning these tasks as if they were her own basic routine.   
  
Korra set down the weight, and plotted the established course on her mental list of things to accomplish. It was linear enough not to cause any questions to rise to mind, except for one less related.  
  
She mentions it not in the form of a question as she walks towards the mat and plants herself to the side of her other comrades, who are already starting into getting themselves adjusted and limber for the tasks ahead.  
  
“I didn’t know you were authorized to train Spartans.”  
  
“I didn’t know that you were authorized to talk back to a Lieutenant but you’ve proven that skill multiple times.”  
  
Korra’s smile faded in exchange for tight lips and a squint.  
  
“I have not been training Spartans for too long now. You’re the first little group under my personal charge. The UNSC needs more of your collective group put into action under proper leadership, and I fit their terms amiably. I primarily commandeer regular marines.” Kuvira hedged, as if she wanted to say something more but declined herself that leisure. She stood at the front of the room with her arms folded, observing as the three attempt to expand the limitations on their bodysuits and break the material into comfort.  
  
Korra suddenly had an extensive amount of questions, all of which she intended to ask.   
  
When she got around to propping open her mouth to offer an inquiry, Kuvira immediately decided that they had stretched enough, and sorted them out onto various machines with equally clear instruction on how she wanted each one of them to proceed, and at what percentage of three times their weight.  
  
Which the Lieutenant seemed to have also recorded on the board.  
  
Korra then wondered how long ago Kuvira had arrived previous to the three of them in order to be that well prepared. She was oddly torn between admiring that and wanting to build upon the limits established by their superior.  
  
Instead, she busied her wandering mind by attending to the speeded ball bag she was assigned at. A certain hyped frequency made it pull around chaotically. It was incredibly dense and compact, and the cord that kept it attached to the ceiling and floor was thick. She pulled it with her finger, testing the twang of its reverberation, which seemed entirely too slow.  
  
She had not quite gotten used to that yet.  
  
Since the augmentation, everything moved much slower to her, simply because she herself moved so much faster. Every bone in her body still ached, she endured migraines. Sometimes, her eyes would bleed a bit in the mornings.   
  
Those were, supposedly, good signs.  
  
When she popped around on her heels playfully and extended her arm for the first contact, the bag hardly had a proper second to respond before Korra was extending her second punch.  
  
Bolin was working on a pull-up bar at an easy rhythm. Out of the corner of her eye, she marked him at breaching past forty.   
  
Mako busied himself on his back, testing how much weight he could press at a slant with his feet. His legs could make an excellent jack for the light reconnaissance vehicles with mounted anti-aircraft guns, or Warthogs.  
  
They worked each of the machines in rotation, until Kuvira recorded various tables of their progress, and decided that they were due for the light sparring, which Korra proved to be over all proficient in.   
  
The brunette maintained a higher calculated speed and reaction time. While Bolin could stagger her with a hard jab, hitting her in the first place did not come at ease. The Spartans bound in blood had begun to attempt to tag-team her in order to land decent damage that she, more often than not, returned in full.  
  
When their movements began adapting to one another’s advantages and distinctive style, Kuvira called them off on break, again to the mess hall. Shipments of protein and enhancements had docked, and she deemed that they had earned it after their immediate show of progress.   
  
The day progressed sluggishly.  
  
\---  
  
Two days of postponing separation, and they finally stood at attention in the eyes of the Captain and other formal officer officials at o’ five hundred, just as Kuvira had said in the briefing. The timing of the other vessel was impressive, when considering the appearance of a Covenant vessel alone in the fabric of the system.  
  
The other Spartans were corralled in the hangar beside the Birds. Two Pelican dropships and an Albatross sat ruggedly on the oil-drizzled floor.   
  
Korra tried to mind where she stepped, even if most of the oil was draining through the grates into the level below.  
  
Suyin did not seem entirely pleased with the condition of the floor and whoever created the hazard with the oil. For the time being, she said nothing on it, which Korra suspected to take a lot of resolve out of her.  
  
The event called for the peaceful dismissal of the enlisted, not yelling at other engineers on the deck for the mishap.  
  
Noting the engineers, Korra also recognized the fact that there were more loitering in the room than usual. She suspected that more came in with the shipment of goods and supplies.  
  
They did not look green to their work, but the engineers certainly did not seem experienced with the presence of Spartans. They stood sparse but collective to one side of the room, passing conversation amongst themselves while they stared unabashed at the towering super-soldiers.  
  
Korra wondered if they were seen as heroes or just new, revolutionary equipment on board.  
  
When Lin Bei Fong evacuates herself and a couple Second-Lieutenants from the enormous Albatross vessel, the first thing Korra’s eyes catch are the scars that line her jaw.  
  
 _They help scare the rookies_ , she recalled Lin saying, when Korra had made a bold remark about it upon her last visit.  
  
For the life of her, she could not recall Lin’s rank, but knew that it was _damn important_ , just like her sister.  
  
Bolin looked uncomfortable, and stood a bit straighter, if possible.   
  
Korra experienced the same notion. It was rare for so many commanding officials to be in the same room with one another. If she could possibly stand any straighter, she would be permanently extending her spine another whole inch.  
  
Mako looks internally at war with himself, challenging a stare between the two comrades beside him, and the scarred Bei Fong directly across and a few feet away.  
  
The system they resided in, like any system, was not small or diminutive in relation to proportional travel. It took Lin several weeks of planning and coordinating to get into the same planetary system as the _Zaofu_. Docking on a planet would have been easier, _if_ they had the clearance to invade civilian space.  
  
“First company loads up on the Albatross, second the first Pelican. Snag your duffels and move.” Lin urged, her broad tone catching every glance in the room.   
  
Without much hesitation, the Spartans followed suitably. Suyin claimed it fortunate that they had enough post-atmospheric vehicles to get them all evacuated onto _The Republic_ ship without making two trips. From there, they would be separated appropriately with the Admiral’s overseeing. Suyin and the Captain would have clean hands from responsibility of them afterwards.   
  
No parting comments were made, no hands shaken. They moved and loaded up without hassle or the inappropriate wear of time.  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, Korra spotted Spartan-411 stepping out of his position with discretion, approaching the visiting Bei Fong to, true to his word, request transfer.  
  
She observed the corresponding expression. Surprise, disbelief, doubt, the slow revelation of agreement.  
  
“I’m not cleared to offer you a place on the ship,” Lin began, after Mako finished explaining his disposition in a hushed tone Korra could not pick up above the tromping of boots of her soon-former comrades as they moved about and loaded.  
  
“That’ll leave us an empty spot.” Suyin interjected, having more or less overheard. “But there are empty spots as it is. Is anyone from the company being stationed on _The Republic_?”  
  
“No that I know of. They’re all taking transfers from Admiral Roland. The three you have are drifters beneath your charge. This one here finds it more pertinent that Spartans are spread around.”  
  
“Trade me a few engineers and he’s all yours then.”  
  
Korra wasn’t wholly sure how to feel about Mako being traded like cargo. She wasn’t wholly sure how to feel about him turning his back on them. She wasn’t wholly sure why she cared so much over impacting the idea of comrade over duty.  
  
Duty came first, it always had, and Mako was ensuring that his would be fulfilled. She could respect that. Unlike many others however, she valued the bonds she had made.  
  
Perhaps a bit too much. The casualties of war weighed heavy on the shoulders of those who were unfit to bear them. For all of the burden forced upon her shoulders and the countless of miles marched with such burdens, logic would entail that she lessen her burden by sticking her attention where it belonged.  
  
When Bolin caught her eye, distressed in every pressed corner of his expression, she buckled beneath her own encouragement and came to partially resent Mako for the unkempt decision.  
  
Lin was pleased with the confirmation of the transfer. She chatted with her commanding sibling for an amount of time before a third-ranked officer informed her that the vessels were stocked and sealed, enough to get them all back to _The Republic_ to carry on with the transfer.  
  
The greying soldier then excused herself with a curt handshake to both, and meandered over to select what engineers she would formally excuse from duty.  
  
None of the faces of the engineers seemed disappointed for the transfer. Indifferent, in the least. They boarded the Albatross they had come in on to collect what diminutive supplies necessary to them, and then evacuated, taking order on where to stand until the ships were prepared to part from the enormous hangar station.   
  
Mako made a speedy trip out of the room to collect his own supplies, pointedly avoiding any friendly face intent on eyeing him.  
  
Korra wanted to get a hand-full of his hair and haul him to the bridge for her own personal, intensive briefing on the values of being placed in a unit and not leaving by any means of unjustified choice.  
  
But she had been told to stand there dutifully and see the other Spartans off, as many of the remaining Crewmen and service officials were doing as well.  
  
When Mako came back, he had the lacking dignity to simply salute to the brunette and the standby brother, who held his tongue only by perceptive orders.   
  
Suyin approached him to shake hands in bidding him farewell on the trade-without-official-clearance, which made the Spartan excessively uncomfortable. Hand-shaking was not a commodity between soldier and officer. It was informal and estranged, yet Suyin hardly seemed to consider it as such.  
  
When he approached the Albatross for the evacuation, he promoted his back to his former squadmates, listening in as Lin briefed him on conduct.   
  
The coldness by which he left gave Korra reason to maintain a scowl fierce enough to deter Bolin from making comment over the events.  
  
The engineers evacuated the Albatross, and the stationed crew were all excused into the next room for the hangar to be vented, and the ships to leave the station. Korra spared a heavy lingering look to the Albatross as Lin boarded, and began barking orders with a viciousness that seemed to be solely reserved for the inhabitants of the aircraft.  
  
It was a sudden change that left her feeling dramatically _betrayed_.  
  
Bolin kept dipping his eyes towards the floor as they watched, behind the thick glass of the prep room, as the inner atmosphere was vented.


	5. Recession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The path to Broker is lined with rumors and medical mishaps that stall progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys and your comments are beyond fantastic. Can't thank you enough for the support on this. I'm never sure if I you all want me to respond to the feedback, but I can tell you it all makes me way happy. I'm also glad not to be rushed on this.  
> My tumblr is trapped-in-room302 if any of you want to chat or request small drabbles or more information.

She pressed her bare fingers to a pale and clammy temple.  
  
Kuvira sat, slackened and without proper form in the wheeled seat at her desk, private and isolated from the many other desks beyond the door in the other room of the third floor deck where sleepless Crewmen chattered and exchanged information amongst one another.  
  
A formal access tuner was discarded near the lamp that, despite how well the room was lit, remained on and unattended to. A terminal computer sat in front of her as her weary eyes scanned over the contents on the screen. A tight migraine had plagued her for the last two hours and yet she could not conjure the will to rise and exit from the room, lest an officer beyond her solitude seek her audience over some matter or another.  
  
She had enough to do, as much as she was the sort of person willing to jump and grasp at the next task.  
  
Tabbing the screen with her fingers, she switched from file to file, peering into old messages and new, simply to give her eyes something to contend with.  
  
The soft blue of the screen hummed as she skidded to the top of the list, prioritizing and cleaning messages that were no longer of relevant use to her. It relayed to her reports, idle comments about happenings within the systems, alterations and amendments to an old protocol, and messages from acquaintances that could, if she were generous enough, pass into the fine line of friendship even beyond simplistic comradery.  
  
Her brows furrowed as she tabbed in on a document that had been sitting in her inbox for a couple days already.   
  
Why hadn’t she noticed it before?  
  
Her days had become blurred, even before the rush of the Spartan evacuation. Sometimes the Lieutenant felt as if she had just awoken from Cryo-sleep, in another system, in another time, miraculously unaged.  
  
But the days flew past her without that merit of bliss.  
  
Her bare fingers found her temple once more as she squinted against the protesting strain of tired eyes.  
  
 **United Nations Space Command** Priority Transmission 48238K-38  
 **Encryption Code** : Black  
 **Public Key** : file /head-long-barrage  
 **From** : PO1 Madison Vermont, FLEETCOM Sector Three Training Official/ (UNSC Service Number: 37837-19487-LL)  
 **To** : Lieutenant Kuvira of Zaofu, SN: 55817-33591-GR  
 **Subject** : RED  
 **Classification** : RESTRICTED  
  
 _/start file/_  
  
If you’re looking for the duffel you thought you set on Roscov’s Pelican, it’s here. I moved it into the lower levels of the ship into storage. I don’t know what you were thinking just leaving it on the bench like that when you were completely taken down by the notion of storing it here in the first place, raising hell at me. It wasn’t easy getting it out of the hands of the officer who picked the damn thing up, not when he outranked me by a strip. No one looked inside of it, the man just thought he had the right of way to try and vocalize across the comm that the property had been retrieved. Had to convince him that it was mine. It’s in storeroom B, and I’m not sending it out to you. If you want it back you can take a couple weeks off and dock on the outer station on Colquitt’s gravity well. We’ll be there for another two months. I can send the code in the next order or you can ask me when you get here.   
  
We’re low on supplies out here and it’s putting a lot of people on edge. We were forced to power down the other day. Those who were in cryo-sleep were forced out and received freezerburn as a result. Several sick and bed-ridden. Some kind of shockwave from a slipspace jump. That’s what the capt suspects anyway. No reports have come in about transfers into a system, so no one can really figure out who the hell got in the system, but they’re searching around for any signs of a ship out of placement. Someone probably had to make an emergency jump.  
  
Brig gen Suyin sent out that report about the Covenant vessel you encountered. That news spread like wildfire and officers are acting like they’re the tinder for it.  
  
Good news is, I'm almost done with archiving the decommissioning system that was disconnected from the vessel _Promiscuous Justice_ , which is being serviced off of this system to be taken apart. Whoever sent the hardware to me, however, let it leak. Giving you a heads up so you don't get any blame.   
  
I'll send you the file soon and you can take it from there.  
  
Madison  
  
 _/end file/_  
  
 _The duffel._  She willed her fingers to pick themselves up and form a passive-aggressive response to the first section.  
  
The room was becoming suffocating, and the weight of it all was not toppled off of her chest through her comrade’s attempts at assurance. Things were becoming estranged from protocol, and it harried her, as well as her commanders, like no other. The struggle against the Covenant had not brought them brilliant success. For every small win, many losses followed, overflowing, drowning out Humanity’s resolve.  
  
It was almost difficult to believe that only a few years prior their strategies were for fellow human rebels.  
  
The new outstanding threat, it seemed, was not enough to fully unite Humanity under a single banner.  
  
Yet as she began to run through and debated the series of replies she could grant that would both satisfy her irritation as well as lean towards a favourable course for herself, her forehead did far more work than her fingers could have attested to.   
  
She opened her eyes, and found that a portion of her face was mashed into the thin glass keyboard.  
  
 _When had she fallen asleep?_  
  
With apprehensive breath, Kuvira shot a wild look to the small clock at the corner of the screen that had shone with 17:09.  
  
The approximate two-hour nap left her groggy, disoriented, and scrambling to see if she had received anything from Suyin, or the Bridge.  
  
Much to her relief, only a general message about the scheduled meals for the next month and their coordinate course to Broker awaited her.  
  
Slacking off, however, did not have her feeling at ease. She finally retired her desk, and tabbed out of the messages from the network. Responses could be given after she stretched, walked around, and woke herself back up. She needed air to clear her mind, and a passing glance in a reflective window let her know just how ghostly pale she looked.  
  
Exiting the exclusive room, she strutted (staggered) her way down the short, narrow corridor that came to life with small white lights that registered her presence in passing. A circular room with an island table that connected to the ceiling greeted the end of her brief journey, where several other officers were busy congregating around and sharing nameless white coffee mugs they had long since ceased in concerning ownership over.  
  
Contrary to her primal worries, they hardly paid her mind amidst their documents and terminals.  
  
Her short walk took her to the fourth deck, past rooms of multiple sleeping crewmen, and through a couple sliding doors into the maintenance room. Beyond that, a broad space gave way to three enormous and heavy-glassed windows on the left that stood to oppose a short set of stairs that would lead up to a corridor for an elevator.  
  
The room remained lit by tiny white lights that decorated the floor in a relative line leading to the stairs, where they then parted into two rows to give the treader an idea of where they were walking. Some lined the walls. Primarily, the room’s eerie glow came from a blue gas giant in the far distance, heavy with hydrogen and natural gases.   
  
Perhaps lead compounds or copper, Kuvira surmised, sparing the tight stress of her mind a moment to admire the natural beauty of the dismal giant and the clusters of other stars and planets around it. Most were formally named at that point.  
  
The breath of awe at the black expanse relieved some of the trembling in her hands. The stress of the job oppressed her naturally charismatic and collected appeal.  
  
Behind her, boots tromped down against the metallic steps of the grated stairs. They paused at length, and began, much quieter, to recede from her awareness as the steps retreated.  
  
“I won’t admonish you for joining me,” she managed, in a less formal tone than she would have preferred.  
  
More stretched silence, and the boots were softly clomping back down the stairs.  
  
Kuvira was granted with the presence of Bolin, who stood  oddly regal and appropriately distanced. To her relief, he did not press awkwardness by saluting her off-kilter from where they stood. She had not the energy to assume her own composition.  
  
After a while, when she stuck to her word and declined admonishing him over any plausible matter in accord to the male’s conduct, his eyes grew less wild with apprehension, and energetic with the beauty of the universal system that Humanity was setting out to claim, light year by light year.  
  
If only the Covenant were not snarling at the backs of their necks.  
  
“I haven’t seen you in a few days. How has your recuperation been going?”  
  
“Following the instructions you left. We’re more well-coordinated together, ma’am,” he offered, passing her a glance. “Brigadier General Suyin sent out a PA saying we’ll be docking at Broker in the next few days.”  
  
“So I’ve heard.”  
  
A comfortable silence filled between them, lapsed by the hum of working engines.  
  
It gave Kuvira time to better compose herself, lost in debating the composition of the morose but sightly light beyond. Passing a glance to the soldier beside her, she noticed he quickly retracted his attention, having been peering at her from the corner of his eye.  
  
“Was there a specific reason for your coming down here?”  
  
“Just to look out. It’s quiet down here, and the windows are wider.”  
  
“It doesn’t seem to be holding your attention too well.”  
  
He then cast a look upon the metal-plated tiles beneath his feet that was entirely too guilty. _Puppy-doggish_ , the Lieutenant progressively related.  
  
“Do you know what awaits us when we pass through Broker’s atmosphere?”  
  
“No, ma’am. I mean, not really.”  
  
“There is more to deal with than a couple rebels and some Unggoy.” Or _Grunts_ , whatever they needed to be referred to as. The endless arsenal of barking, chittering, methane-tank harboring nuisances. They were squat and cowardly and overwhelming in their numbers.  
  
Bolin seemed thoughtfully indifferent about the presence of either, weighing and teetering on the brink of making comment, as if waiting for her to continue.  
  
“You’ve been deploying on much smaller scale things, based on the information in your given file. This is a very large scale ordeal, as much as it does not seem like it during the briefings.” Kuvira turned to the side slightly, catching the Spartan’s eyes and holding the look. With brows furrowed, her severity commanded his attention. “I believe these deployments will be done on a much larger scale than anticipated, even at this point in time. The periodic, blipped arrivals of Covenant vessels – in localized systems, no less – do not foretell of positive promotions in our upcoming tasks.”  
  
Bolin had narrowed his eyes, pressed his brows down, and finally settled on squinting at her.  
  
He did not shy from showing his deliberating. Kuvira found it to be dauntingly contrasting to many more emotionally fraudulent Spartans. She liked blatancy and honesty. It made her life just a bit easier.  
  
“Is there something more specific we should be worried about?” He prompted, shuffling so that he was facing the Lieutenant a bit more reliably.  
  
“It’s more of a hunch on my part,” Kuvira corrected, glancing back out towards the starry sea they cruised upon. “These reports are highly concerning and irregular. Only a small portion of them have been noted to those in service of the UNSC, and far less so to any civilians.”  
  
“The people should be made aware that there are alien warships skulking around on their back doors.”  
  
“That isn’t something that either of us should concern ourselves with. It isn’t something we should be _discussing_. I want you and five-five-seven to remain on your toes, no matter what else is said, until the threat is incapacitated and cleared. You know how quickly colonies can go down with the slightest slip-up.”  
  
Yes, he was aware. His planet and every one he knew, aside from Mako, remained as nothing but a ghosted glass form the UNSC had not yet attempted to put resources into terraforming. He stood as one of the few orphaned children to experience planetary glassing, and live on productively to remember its horrors.   
  
He grew into solemn comprehension, and Kuvira left her statements at that, giving him a slight shove with the side of her closed fist against his shoulder, before she deemed herself righteous enough to return to her own quarters.  
  
Much to Bolin’s surprise, he was _nudged_ a degree by her seemingly soft impact.  
  
He stared her down as she retreated to the closed doors she had entered through.   
  
Much to her personal misfortune, Kuvira turned the corner only to bump into another officer, and be immediately harassed by a need of tasks from her. She suspected it would have occurred at some point in that twenty-four hour time period. She seemed hardly pleased to be needed, however. A toll on her had become evident.  
  
Knowing her for the short time period, Bolin already prescribed her pressed lips as closed irritation in listening to the fellow officer request favours. In spite of himself, he smiled.   
  
Some things remained at a constant in an ever changing reality.  
  
\---  
  
“You’re a bit shorter than most.”  
  
“ _Yeah_ , well _you’re_ just tall.”  
  
The engineer shrugged her shoulders. “So I’ve been told.”  
  
“I still tower over a lot of people,” Korra defended, without any lingering harsh tone. Her size was lacking to many Spartans, but she had proven to be far from inept. That fact alone prevented her from becoming angered over the judgmental comments over her progress.  
  
“I’m sure you do.”  
  
Korra leaned her upper half over the counter. Her form-fitting attire was harshly black enough that she held no qualm or concern over the smudges of oil over the desk that might compromise her apparel. Commanders were hard _sticklers_ about disposition and quality. Unless wear and tear was a given, her clothing needed to remain in the condition it was gifted. She squished her cheeks into her palms, and chose to observe the engineer’s work.  
  
Blueprint sketching. It was a design of a familiar weapon, yet some peaking features were not familiar to her.  
  
She switched her stare from the paper that the engineer worked along, edging out the details and writing down notes that Korra worked out even as they were in upside down, and rushed writing.  
  
The woman, whose dirtied nametag declared the last name of **Sato** , periodically shot Korra a smile, and hummed to the faint radio beneath her breath.  
  
Some kind of old jazzy tune. Korra could dig it.  
  
“What’s your first name?”  
  
“Asami.”  
  
“Oh-kay.”  
  
She could dig that name too.   
  
There was something about the new engineer that she liked. Aside from coming to her with questions about _The Republic_ , Asami proved to be a treat to other less formal conversation and an array of skills that Korra was not privy to witnessing first hand.  
  
Sato was intelligent, almost frighteningly so. Her innovation and ideas about new forms of weaponry were spilled out within the first hour that the two had conversed and identified shared interests. She was handy and artistic as well.  
  
From a distance, she almost looked too snooty to approach. Korra did not regret her buffed introduction.  
  
They moved from questions about the ships they occupied to Asami’s work, to Broker, and the engineer’s family ties.  
  
“My father owns a lot of land and resources on Arcadia,” Asami confessed, adding mindless details to the inner structure of a Pelican repair. “A lot of the wilderness is technically his under contract, after a lot of the rebel presence was pushed off. He gives a lot of the natural resources to the less wealthy districts to keep a lot of the balance there, and a lot of his innovation is integrated into vehicular models for the UNSC.”  
  
“The tea and coffee that comes from there is _amazing_.”  
  
Asami had to laugh at that. Most people fawned annoyingly over the information. It was a gamble revealing it. Korra was interesting enough to carry one bit of information and connect it to something irrelevant, but appealing.  
  
The Spartan beamed at the engineer’s amusement, taking it as approval. She believed another friend had just been made. She had the deliberate urge to introduce Bolin, who had certainly taken the absence of his sibling to heart, despite his attempts at keeping himself busy.  
  
“Where are your parents from?”  
  
Was the engineer not aware of the condition of most Spartan’s relatives? She supposed, like many things, that information was kept under wraps for pertinent reasons.  
  
Spartan-557 struggled not to allow her expression to fall too harshly. It would ruin the mood she had built upon. Social interaction was rarely successful for her, or those of her kind. Her smile fell briefly, but she forced it back and wound it tight, tense.  
  
Asami noticed, regardless. She was excessively kind enough not to allow the Spartan to struggle and bat the oppressive waves of assumption in order to gain the grounds for an appropriate response.  
  
Instead, Asami re-routed the conversation as quickly as she could, by yanking down hard on a bolt she had begun to busy herself with. The leg of the Pelican in the repair hangar that they occupied fell right off with a heavy resounding clang against the grating beneath.  
  
The engineer swore softly, peeling off a glove, and mussed a hand through her hair, pressing her goggles up farther on her forehead in the process.  
  
“I guess that bolt was a bit more worn than I thought.”   
  
Korra, adept in picking out pieces of personality, found it an uncharacteristic mistake, and therefore intentional. Her smile became slightly more genuine. Relief parried the stress, and she removed herself from the table.  
  
“What one do you need to replace it?”  
  
\---  
  
Her nights were dreamless previous to and onwards from the encounter.   
  
What Korra believed to be her first dream in a while had, in fact, not been.   
  
The Lieutenant’s face hovered over her own, spilling incoherent words sourced from an unfriendly frown. The edges of her narrowed vision were blurred. Not finding the appeal in the harsh tone, Korra closed her eyes again, and shifted to the side. What harm could come from doing so in a dream? Her body ached, and the slightest movement caused a ripple of sharp pain along the muscles of her back.  
  
A sharper, more present pain suddenly came upon one side of her face, and then the other. A terse jolt in her neck from the latter impact against her face caused her brain to jump to life immediately, concerned over the well-being of her limp body. She hitched into a fight or flight mode.  
  
When she shoved her hand out, Korra had come to discover that she had balled it into a fist with unknowing reactivity.  
  
It connected to what _felt_ like a jaw, and a weight she had not known to have been on her side was lifted.  
  
The brunette grunted at this, peeling open her eyes to lights that were just _too damn bright_ for her taste. When she churned onto the side that did not ache in order to avoid them, she faced the door. Taking spare seconds to blink herself awake, she had come to discover that _the Lieutenant_ was sprawled on the floor, rubbing her jaw with the most bewildered expression.  
  
A profound and horrifying realization caused Korra to bolt upright faster than she thought herself possible, even in her inhuman state of speediness.   
  
She went to untangle herself from the sheets, but failed to react to the oncoming contact as she struggled in her own delirium.  
  
Kuvira had darted up, grabbing a handful of brown hair in a vengeful grip. With a brutal pull, Korra joined her on the floor, flailing in a way that expressed a will to accept what was coming to her from a superior that she had caused damage to, and a more presented, primal will to defend herself against the returned affliction.   
  
Korra, more or, less, squawled as gravity discarded her onto the floor, and made an effort to face the Lieutenant, reaching behind herself to get any kind of purchase on the reprimanding officer.   
  
Kuvira had hooked her legs around the risen, bare midriff of the Spartan, locking her into place with a strength she should _definitely_ not be able to have.  
  
The last time Korra punched someone in the jaw that had not been another super-soldier, their jaw had been disconnected from their cranium entirely. Reasonably, however, that had been a very intended punch. For all Korra was aware, she could have done a soft and lazy smack.  
  
For all Korra was aware, the strange and piercing pain in her back that slowly began to feel like hot flame from sitting far, far too close to a raging bonfire, could have been inhibiting her strength and the will she carried to be free from the Lieutenant’s tight hold.  
  
The brunette hissed and grunted with the discomfort of being held at odds, and finally stopped writhing. The more she moved due to her own affliction, the tighter Kuvira held, and the more her head was pulled back irregularly. Whatever the Lieutenant had been saying, if it were anything at all, fell upon deaf ears. She conjured advice from her pre-augmentation life, and sucked in a heavy breath, letting it out slowly until she was reduced to the slight twinging trembles that Kuvira soon seemed to identify as another source of pain.  
  
The Lieutenant unhooked her legs from around the soldier. However, instead of simply releasing the wound hold she had on the other’s hair, she shoved Korra’s head forward, causing the female to jolt forth, and clamber over onto her hands and knees.   
  
Kuvira looked as if she wanted to add in a kick to the ribs when Korra looked up accusingly.  
  
“The AI system has been trying to wake you up for the past hour. I was then called in entirely unnecessarily, if you were to _listen_ and get up when instructed. I tried calling your coded name as well as your personalized name, banging on the side of the wall, and getting physical with you, which came as an _unfortunate_ last resort. Have you reverted to being eight years old? I recall even the recruited getting out of bed faster. I want to hear a _damn_ good excuse or your morning is about to become hell.”  
  
She did not know.  
  
She had not heard the AI system, or noticed the brightened lights, or heard her given name, or her personal name, nor the clanging of the wall.  
  
She had trouble hearing what Kuvira was saying in the first place, and by the strained lines of her throat, she was talking loudly.  
  
Korra lifted a hand from the tiled flooring to feel along her ears. They felt wet.  
  
Looking up at the superior once more, it became visually apparent that Kuvira had gone quiet. Her generally severe eyebrows were hiked up her head, and her lips had started at a slow parting.  
  
When Korra began to stand, Kuvira crossed the very short expanse of the room, urging her to sit with a firm hand on both of her shoulders. The Lieutenant was then placing a gloved hand on the side of her cheek, while the other slowly forced her head to the side.  
  
The Spartan brought her own drying fingertips to her attention. They glistened with running crimson.   
  
When Kuvira brought her hand away from Korra’s face, the gloves were coloured just the same.  
  
Her ears had only bled once after augmentation. Less than twelve hours afterwards, but it cleared quickly. Periodically, the corners of her eyes would bleed under severe stress in the mornings, but such resolved itself after a couple hours. The crippling pain, too, had gone to the back of her mind months after the procedure.  
  
It was more than alarming to be experiencing symptoms of that magnitude all over again so long after it had happened. No wonder she had not heard her superior.  
  
Their physical distress on the floor of her room caused the blood to pool freely in slow but present dribbles.  
  
Kuvira, understanding that now, had a very peculiar kindness and concern in her expression as she knelt to the floor before the Spartan, turning the soldier’s head this way and that. Such raw anxiety in the dark-haired woman’s expression – she could have been mistaken for someone else in that factor alone. She held up a finger, mouthing something that Korra interpreted to be _follow_.   
  
She did, to the best of her ability, and Kuvira did not seem sated at all. She backed herself out of the room and turned down the hall to the left, reappearing shortly after with a couple of individuals in white clothing in tow.  They were just as rushed and urgent as Korra's spinning mind caused her to feel. Her raging heart caused her arms and legs to feel nothing above the line of liquefied. 


	6. Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter than the previous ones.

She feels tired. Her limbs, weighted.  
  
When her eyes find the lights, they seem far off and narrow, and Korra can hardly discern whether or not they are stars, or of planetary origin.  
  
They begin to prickle and dance lazily, replicating the dull and but distinct thrum of her heart. Instead of particularly circular, they become stretched and linear, broken by the occasional gnarled strings of darkness.  
  
They were penetrating into the lower level of rippling waves, Korra realizes.  
  
They shimmer, and beckon, and entice.  
  
Beyond them, droplets of red float through the air, defying any amount of gravity that might have once restrained them to the surface of what lay beneath them. An orange light is beaming somewhere off in the corner of her vision, causing the droplets of red to look brilliant and lively.  
  
Korra tries to sit up in vain. Her ears pound with resilience, and her head spins as she struggles through the remnants of her dreamed sleep, each previous visage lost with the coming reality that she is brought into. The chill begins to thaw from her body.  
  
Someone speaks to her off to her left. Favouring the retrieval of her sense of balance, Korra waves them off, and allows her fingers to settle unceremoniously on the various cords leeching out from different sections of her body.  
  
For all of the blaring and urgency beyond the room, the Spartan retains the notion that her head is stuck in some sort of tank or bowl, muffling a heavy portion of the outside realm of her dim concentration and thrumming senses. She blinks, and finds that her Lieutenant has sunk over her, helping her remove the strange vines of tubes that run out from her skin with an amount of care that does not threaten possible damage. The suction cups grapple at her darker skin, and before she can quite realize it, she is giggling at undefined intervals until the Lieutenant finds it suitable to reach over to try and quiet her down.  
  
“We need to move.”  
  
Korra starts at the clarity of the other’s voice. Her head no longer feels light and airy, but heavy, and droplets of water that skim down her face cause her hair to become a nuisance until Kuvira swipes at her face, and tries to tug her off of the cold metallic table that she is laying on.  
  
“Whaash. Happfenenin?” She slurs heavily, and frowns at herself, disappointed at her own demeanor when she cannot find the strength to straighten her back to a superior.  
  
“We’re evacuating the station for now. The Stealthy Corvette that came by nearly a week ago brought friends with them, and they’ve been at a circumference of our perimeter. We’re too close to Broker to risk the attention of the station, so we’re separating.”  
  
Kuvira explains this as she digs loose clothing out from a nearby bin. They’re light blue.   
  
When Korra looks down, she realizes she is entirely bare aside from undergarments at her hips, and it takes a low consensus of will power not to cover herself. With her arms trapped at her sides by the repression of screaming muscles, it is not that hard to refuse the desire to retain some form of dignity before the Lieutenant.  
  
Kuvira helps in getting wraps around her chest with shocking precision and speed. Or perhaps, like the rest of her body, her eyes are lagging too much to keep up with the movement. Before she can utter another poorly constructed phrase of English, Kuvira is pulling the shirt on over her head, helping her step into the sweat pants, and is ushering her out the door of the medical hangar.   
  
Surprisingly, the Lieutenant allows herself to be leaned against, going as far as to throw one of Korra’s arms about her shoulders for support as the Spartan staggers out of the doorway, sputtering an incoherent mess of questions that serve to be nothing more than wastes of breath and precious time.  
  
The pace Korra is forced to take down the hallway becomes a burning pain in her thighs, but she manages, with the blaring alarm in the background becoming increasingly ever present until whatever explanation the Lieutenant offers her is lost in an array of irritable thoughts.  
  
She says something about vented atmosphere, a breach in the lower hulls, some number of casualties. Suyin and Bataar leading an arsenal? A distraction? She is leading something, and they are leaving for the atmosphere of Broker without any support from Command.  
  
Korra, piecing bit by bit together, begins to suck in rapid breaths, causing Kuvira to momentarily stop in order to make sure she would not pass out as they were. The task of carrying a dead-weight Spartan body for one lonely Lieutenant is improbable.   
  
So she matches her breath with that of her superior, and they turn into a seal-enabled door just as a feminine voice announces over the comm that the atmosphere in the medical hangar will be vented.  
  
Behind them, as the door seals securely shut, Korra can make out the thick boom as the atmosphere is compressed out of the room. In relief, she slumps into the nearest desk, and Bolin bolts forward to give the Spartan a more withstanding shoulder to ease on.   
  
He ends up having to partially scoop her up into his arms and trudge his way towards the stationed Pelican as Huan makes a show of getting a small squad to climb into the exo-atmospheric vehicle.  
  
Suyin and Bataar were likely occupying the bridge for maneuver and defense tactics. The thunderous roar of deployed Magnetic Accelerator Cannons. Slower than the Archer missiles, but used to break through Covenant shields. They were the missiles that meant business, and Korra located a reasonable amount of strength to help herself alongside Bolin to the vehicle. Space was not an appropriate location for a Spartan to be utilized properly, unless they had some profound intel to offer the Captain.  
  
If Korra squinted, she could make out Asami speaking with Wei and Wing, and a couple of Warthog vehicles being secured on an enormous Albatross. Those were resources they were very likely going to be stuck with, she reasoned, without the burden of keeping her body upright a clarity was bestowed upon her mind.   
  
“Where’s my armour?”  
  
“I was told we’ll get you suited up as soon as we pass into the city for landing. Korra – you can’t imagine what’s been going on.”   
  
She notes that Spartan 348’s eyes are wild, and as soon as a majority of other personnel of relevance to their task are loaded, he bolts up the ramp into the interior without hesitation, earning him a scornful look from a few jostled soldiers, too revved and excitable to appreciate the fact that they’re fortunate enough to be accompanied by human War Machines.   
  
The weight and power behind his step causes the Pelican and its ramp to tremble and threaten instability.  
  
Once inside of the aircraft, Bolin deposits the other Spartan onto a seat, helping her blearily secure her position within it.   
  
Other soldiers shift about in the uneasy atmosphere, partly from witnessing an infamous Spartan in such a compromising position, and partly from the charged atmosphere that their escape brings about.  
  
The Lieutenant drops her head down slightly as she hangs in the doorway. The severity of her expression is shadowed with the blaring of alarms behind her, and the ship’s feminine-oriented AI begins to introduce a countdown for the atmosphere in the hangar to be vented, preparing them for their evacuation into the entrenching suction of space. She looks over the array of varied courage before her, and turns her head back to address a couple of engineers on the deck.  
  
Sato steps aboard, and plants herself down beside the recovering Spartan with a comforting disposition that, in the least, causes a smile to pull onto the soldier’s dry lips.  
  
“How long was I in cryo-sleep?” Korra rasps to the engineer, and when she is given a questionable look, she cocks her head towards the sour-looking Lieutenant, who does nothing more than step away from the doors as they raise to secure the group inside of the exo-atmospheric vehicle. She wonders if she had been heard, if her voice had come back to her coherently.   
  
The Pelican jolts as magnetic clamps release its legs, and it begins to rise. Beyond the dropship’s walls, an alarm begins to sound when the doors to the bay slide open.  
  
A Pelican has limited efficiency outside of a planet’s sustainable atmosphere. The engines, mounted on several pairs of nacelles, can rotate and operate independently for better low-altitude maneuvering. They were primarily utilized in delivering troops from the top layer of orbit to the ground, not sliding past covenant battle ships several kilometers from Broker’s gravity well.  
  
Korra trusts her superiors, but her disoriented mind fights to collaborate with her greater intelligence as to how they would manage to pass enemy sensors without being detected and consequently blasted into the voided depths of the universe’s greater conscience.  
  
The vehicle shakes purposefully, beyond the thrum of its struggle outside of _Zaofu_.  
  
Korra is hit with the realization that they are passing through a field of debris in an effort to mask their presence from covenant sensors, and she slinks back into her seat with some measure of relief.  
  
Of course she can trust her superiors, who have lived and breathed throughout the past days’ events, whereas Korra had missed a multitude of them in a state of recovering unconsciousness.   
  
But no one looks as eased about the scenario as Korra does.  
  
When she studies the Lieutenant, she notices that her gloves are discarded, and she grips a bar with enough ferocity to turn some of her knuckles a bold red, and a fair part of her hand a ghastly white.   
  
Kuvira works her jaw as she stares ahead towards the cockpit, a grim and determined squint that gradually collects the attention of other marines as they follow the Spartan’s line of sight.  
  
Korra easily forgets how impressionable they can be when they seek answers just as well as she does; synonymously, leadership.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for not updating this as much as I would like to. Finals and general life drama have been drowning me. I would love to get back into updating this more regularly.  
> I had a request to put a little Mass Effect into this as well, just the various alien races. Thoughts?


	7. Revive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the non-updates. Might continue this. Very short chap to reintroduce it. Give some feedback and enjoy!

When they pierce through the gravity well of the planet and enter the lower atmosphere, one of the engines has failed due to a stray plasma shot, and Korra can feel the raw heat of the fire plaguing the coolants through the titanium-A skin of the descending vehicle.

“I want those rotors on now,” she hears the Lieutenant yell towards the cockpit.

“One of them is damaged. Max boost at seventy-five percent,” the pilot reports back, struggling with the way her altitude spread trembles in her hand. “Seventy. Sixty-three.”

“Land it in the flats down there.”

The pilot makes an unintelligible response, yelled and garbled, and the entire vehicle makes a hard turn that causes Korra to compress back into her seat, and the soldiers in front of her to jerk and hang from their seat straps.

Kuvira, unsecured, slams bodily into a metallic locker right beside the Spartan, and Korra reaches out a shaky arm to splay it across the mid-section of the Lieutenant in a conceived effort to keep her from hitting the other side of the room in the event that the aircraft lurches in the other direction. It is the least she can do to repay the kindness and comradery granted.

The engines whine loudly with the hard turn, and that is the least of her worries. A searing impact slams into the vehicle, causing a cacophony of sirens and pitched beeps to set off on the interior. The dark setting is awash in red, and for a moment, Korra is taken back to her delirious escape from the breached ship. But she is delirious no longer, and everything is all too present and real.

What can she do in the air?

The pilot is back to yelling, and even with the Spartan’s enhanced senses, she can barely make out more than “brace” and “going down” but that is all she needs to understand and she clenches her jaw tight, and crushes the lieutenant against the compacted locker.

Another voice joins the pilot’s, and Korra only recognizes it as her own when the structure of one of the three bay doors is opened and she can see their spiraling descent as the swells of tiny mountains become enormous and foreboding. Everything else is lost to her.

\------ Previous ------

Tenzin hovers above her, waving a baton over her body.

Her armour unlocks from its frozen state, and Korra groans, sitting up, palming the back of her head. Thick red paint decorates her chestplate, and a significant section of her lower left leg. Tenzin extends a hand, and she takes it, being helped along into balancing on her own two feet, though it’s much due to her own effort. She could have easily pulled him down with her, but it would certainly not have improved upon the marks she already earned during the training course.

“You were the first one down on your team,” he remarks, disapproving.

Korra flexes her hand, and nods as he hands her back her rifle. She removes the clip containing the tactical training rounds, or TTR, and slides a new one in, wiping at the residue of paint on her leg. Each TTR bullet is encased in a polymer shell with a proximity fuse inside that dissolves the shell milliseconds before it impacts its intended (or unintended) target. Once dissolved, it leaves a large red paint splatter, giving the impression of a wound, mortal or otherwise. Within the paint is a powerful anesthetic, intended to pull the target into unconsciousness for hours depending on where the individual was hit. It works to immobilize the woven nano-fibers of training attire, causing it to harden beyond the possibility of mobility.

She has been unfrozen, signifying the end of the training activity.

“Pouting isn’t allowed on the field,” Tenzin adds, turning his back to her.

She doesn’t retract the bottom lip that pokes out, but she stalks along behind him obediently. Despite her failure for the day, she is still due a dinner. Tenzin is kind enough to provide it. She had met other instructors that absolved her of both lunch and morning breakfast, and added an additional two miles to her hike. Korra still wonders how she survived that day.

\----- Present Day -----

She pulls her eyes open, her stomach lurching heavily, something firm digging into it. She tries to move, and something constricts around her. When the blurriness in her vision subsides, dirt and rocks and metal pieces are moving beneath her.

She’s being carried, she realizes belatedly. The person beneath her stumbles, a ragged breath escaping, and the pace slows.

She wants to use her legs, but she can hardly feel them, and she goes slack again.

 

\----- Previous -----

”One-hundred and two. One-hundred and three. One-hundred and- Get up, Korra.”

She can’t. She can’t do it anymore. Her arms are burning, and they refuse to function. She tries. 

”You have more to do.” Tenzin demands, standing above her, glowering.

How can she keep moving? Her arms won’t move. She can hardly think through the pain.

”Get up.”

\----- Present -----

It’s a different voice this time. Feminine, and hoarse. Korra cracks open an eye, and meets green. The Lieutenant is pushing her, a bit hard, looking up now and then, determination written on her face, but Korra can sense a prevalent desperation.

”GET UP.”

”Lieutenant, they’re breaching the border!”

She hears Kuvira sigh heavily, and stand up, out of her field of vision. Rapid gunfire drowns out her voice, but Korra can see her lips moving furiously, gestures to accompany it.

This time, she can move her arm. This time, she can use it to push herself up into a sitting position. 

Someone shoves an assault rifle into her unsteady hands.

Kuvira is crouched before her again, hands locked on her shoulders, gripping for attention. “I need you active, I need you listening to me.”


	8. Faded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wwwelcome back I've found the time and aspiration to write again. Another short chapter, because I have no idea if the lok people are active, but I did enjoy doing this, and have more on the way. Feel free to ask questions if something about Halo doesn't make sense or if I didn't clarify. This chapter was a bit of a rush job around stressful times.

Her arms still felt limp and discarded; parts of her that simply would not work. Her ears felt muffled, but Korra could hear her commander clearly. With great effort, she managed to push herself up, and grip the rifle better. Still in the clothes Kuvira had helped her slide into from the medical bay, Korra felt almost naked.  
  
But not defenseless. Never defenseless. She was created to be anything but.  
  
She peered over the edge of the barrier – one of many chips and shields from their craft, and scanned her eyes over what met them. Quickly, she counted fourteen insurrectionists, and ducked back down, throwing her arm over the top of the barricade to fire. With a single arm, Korra sprayed across the field where other soldiers could only hit in sparing pieces as they ducked in and out of the barriers and field wreckage. Screams met her dulled but keen ears as her rounds ripped through cheap black market plasma armor and shoddy pieces of armor.  
  
Shouting from the opposing forces lessened the rain of rounds upon them, bit by bit, and as she looked again Bolin barreled over chunks of rock to climb atop, perfecting his posture and helping the ranged soldiers shoot down the remaining.   
  
As she had come into chaos, the world grew slow again. Kuvira shouted orders above her. Korra wanted to loll her head back into oblivion.  
  
A firm touch made her twitch as she looked up, chest heaving despite the minor action taken.  
  
“That was excellent,” the Lieutenant breathed, and Korra gawked in silence. “You shredded half of them without even looking.”  
  
Korra blinked, and Kuvira was crouched beside her. Immediately, she noted that the Lieutenant’s braid had fallen out, leaving her with a wild mess of ink. It struck Korra as attractively savage, and realizing that stunned her more than anything.  
  
Again, Kuvira had risen, fist in the air and victory in her smile.  
  
“Thirty-nine down on first contact wreckage! You’ve all done excellently! Jam their equipment. Alpha, I want you down into the bunker. Watch your corners. Free fire.”  
  
The soldiers snapped into action without so much as a second word, one rowdy woman without a helmet _whooping_. Morale seemed higher than when they had been on the dropship in the first place. She wondered again how long she had been out. Her thoughts fuzzed, but there was a swell of pride and victory in herself as well. The average soldiers marveled at Bolin, and many marveled at her in passing.   
  
A hand seated itself at the side of her sore ribs and Korra grunted, already leaning against a gradually familiar chest piece as she was helped up to her feet.  
  
Wordlessly, she followed Kuvira as she limped away from the field, eyes forward. The giddiness was short lived, but she felt better regardless.  
  
Kuvira pulled the flap of the covered shelter open, made it clear she was adopting the location as her own, and closed it behind them. Let the soldiers sort their spoils and ease into cover. She had another officer at her disposal.  
  
“Sit down.”  
  
Korra sat, and winced.  
  
“Our medic was on the Albatross. For now, we have no communications.” Kuvira lowered herself before the Spartan, flicking her eyes up once before studying the thinly clad fabric of her leg, and pulling it up.   
  
Korra flinched.  
  
“We can’t press on with Bolin alone and you in tow. We need to reestablish connection, and get you fully mobile.” She ran her lighter fingers along bruised skin, testing with pressure now and then.  
  
“Spartan certified. And medically certified. Wow.” Korra snarked, and then yelped when the other woman squeezed.  
  
“You know little about me, 557. Take off your shirt for me.”  
  
Korra had no response once the order was added. Looking down, she was blood and earth stained, and several sections were torn from the impact. She pried it off and discarded it to the other side of the room.  
  
“I’d probably know you more if you took a second to talk to me rather than scrutinize.”  
  
“Our service to humanity is more important than gathering in a circle passing out little cups of tea to talk about how our days went.” Kuvira shot, flicking through a small holographic display that emanated from her uniform.  
  
“That’s not what I meant.” Korra said, with a grit in her tone as she clenched her jaw. Kuvira dug around in a box below her feet. Looking down, she could see that Kuvira was using a field x-ray. The speed of it repeatedly scanning her over stung. When she finished, she used a hardlight eye piece. Data points flashed before the Lieutenant’s used eye.  
  
“Nothing is broken. Your pulse was hard on the field. You’ll regenerate torn tissue in forty-eight hours. Mostly.” She prodded in a couple more places, and then moved closer to inspect the Spartan’s upper half. “Atmospheric burns. Thirty percent. Brain function unsourced. Two ribs broken. Overuse of muscle capacity in your right arm.” She clicked the hardlight off, and stashed it away, rubbing a hand down the side of her face as she took a moment of reprieve.  
  
After a few moments of silence, Kuvira stood and hefted her shoulders with a breath before turning to the Spartan. “Lie down. I have your gear. But you’re not moving until you’re functional.”  
  
Oh no. No. Korra hated being kept in the dark. She went to stand in protest, only for one of her knees to buckle and for the lieutenant to shove her back down, and lean over her, making even eye contact.   
  
“That is an order, 557.”  
  
Korra eased her breath, and nodded. “If you answer some of my questions.”  
  
Kuvira seemed to fence the idea with a notion of amusement, leaning from one side to the other, before she inclined her head.  
  
“You have been out for two hours post impact. We landed near an Insurrectionist base, and they came running. A few scouts, and then more. We won, and we have taken their base.”  
  
“I’ve pieced that much together. Mostly. I just mean-“ Korra seethed, and adjusted on the bunker’s bed.  
  
“Me.” Kuvira’s shoulders seemed to deflate a little. She checks the pockets of her uniform, pulling out a hair band, and going to reign in the wild mess as the other soldier pressed.  
  
“ _Don’t_ – I mean, keep your hair loose. It looks nice.”  
  
Kuvira gave her a measured stare, slowly loosening her hold on the inky strands, and pocketing the hair tie. “You’re opinionated for a war machine.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
The comment seemed to stun the other into terse silence. The searing stare and vacant expression made her commander look predatory.  
  
_What are you thinking_?  
  
Korra swallowed, and waited.   
  
“You must have taken more of a hit than I thought,” the Lieutenant stated, unmoving, monotonous. “I think the situation has overwhelmed you. You should _lie down_ and _sleep_.”  
  
The compassion and comradery ebbed away, and Korra could only stare as it did, the cold suddenly insignificant to her bare skin. The heat of confusion, embarrassment, and frustration kept her plenty warm.  
  
“Stay.” Kuvira growled, before leaving Korra alone in the shelter.  
  
\---  
  
She left her rangers on watch as she made her way back towards her claimed shelter. She had gotten carried away, and stumbled into several things. The drinks from the crates of the rebels were strong, and of unknown origins. Kuvira set the limit firmly. Engineers and soldiers snugged around a concealed campfire, sheltered away from view and keeping themselves quiet.  
  
Seldom did she have hangovers. Simply making it to her own “room” was her concern.  
  
The camp was a bit unorganized, but surprisingly well-built from the hands of filthy deserters. Truly, it was better than what they had intended to set up.  
  
Her vision swayed, this time pleasantly, and Kuvira almost cracked a smile. Finally, the sealed entrance came into view at the west of the encampment, and Kuvira shouldered her way in, a puff escaping her. Whatever they had downed, it was having a purely positive advancement on her mood.  
  
Kuvira stopped in her tracks at the sight of a dim blue light and bright blue eyes beneath it.   
  
She would have stepped right back out, had all the other corners of the base not been adopted.  
  
The Spartan looked up from a data pad, and grunted as she sat up using shaking arms. As opposed to demanding, Korra offered a soft _hello_.  
  
It eased Kuvira’s nerves, not to be met with the prior attitude. She walked over, snagged a pillow from the base of the bed, scrutinized it, and then plopped it to the floor before going to lie down.  
  
She could have fallen asleep then. She had slept in far worse places. But no such places had a continual prodding at her shoulder and murmuring. A harder jab made her crack an eye open, and she flicked her eyes up at the Spartan leaning over the edge of the cot.  
  
“There’s a bed right here.”  
  
“Y’innit.” Breathy, deep, and half-assed was her response. She was prodded again, and grunted, turning more fully towards the other. “Mh.”  
  
“There’s easily space for two. You need to recuperate.”  
  
If there was one thing she was **not** having that night, it was being bugged repeatedly to get in a bed. Kuvira heaved herself up shakily, attempting to crawl into the bed.  
  
The Spartan met her not with resistance, but with shaky fingers disconnecting sections of her armor. She was well prepared to deal with sleeping uncomfortably, as long as she slept soon, but as the weight of the armor peeled away, Kuvira leaned back to aid the other, shedding from her war attire and- _oh_ , the sheets felt oddly good. Dark, a little ripped, but hardly anything else wrong. To think lives were potentially lost for the rebels to get ahold of this material made her a little sick.  
  
Irritatingly enough, once she managed to get comfortable, she became awake.  
  
She should have taken a bottle back with her.  
  
A soft tone pervaded the silence – though her crew could be heard murmuring – and Kuvira cocked her head back to look at the other.  
  
“Did I do something wrong?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“That’s the exact tone someone uses when someone did something wrong.”  
  
Kuvira raised up, fixing narrowed eyes onto the other. “You ask too many questions. You were taught to _do_ , and ask questions _secondly_. If you don’t _shut up_ , I’m sleeping outside.”  
  
“A soldier should know their leadership in order to trust them.”  
  
“A **good** soldier shuts their mouth and follows orders regardless.”  
  
A sour look met Kuvira, and in turn she raised up on her arm more, scowling at the brunette.  
  
Korra opened her mouth to shoot a response, ire in her eyes, and then closed it, casting a look away and closing her eyes.  
  
For a long while, Kuvira lied there, too many thoughts invading, and sleep beyond her reach. She listened to the other’s breathing, and found that it never lessened.  
  
“557, are yo-.”  
  
Her voice seemed to tear apart the silence compared to the whispered response.  
  
“Please call me Korra.”  
  
Kuvira stalled, thought on it, and shifted to look at the other. In the low blue light of the base’s holographic display, she could make out the other’s features. Eyes closed, but brows furrowed.  
  
“Korra.” Her slur was gone, but her body tingled. “Ask me your questions.”  
  
Another pause grew between them, before the Spartan edged closer. Kuvira stiffened.  
  
“What do you have to do with Spartans?”  
  
“Mmh?”  
  
“They only let people who have close experience train or lead. You said before, you only had regular soldiers.”  
  
Kuvira inhaled, and felt the edge of her lip twitch. “It’s classified.”  
  
“All of you seems classified.”  
  
“And you will do well to remember that. I am your commanding officer.”  
  
“Of us.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“No.” Korra stated, edging her hand across the sheets towards Kuvira. She looked down at it, back at the other’s eyes, and then down again. The hand sought her own, shaded skin clashing with her ivory tone. She had flinched, out of instinct, and forced herself still.  
  
“Of _us_. Bolin, and me. Just us. Out of them all, just us.”  
  
Korra had progressed into a whisper that had the Lieutenant leaning closer and closer to hear her. Kuvira ticked her head to the side, thick brows furrowed in thought.  
  
_Us_.  
  
Kuvira ripped her hand away from the other’s, sitting up with eyes ablaze. “I am **not like you**.”  
  
“You don’t need to hide it from us.”  
  
“My status is- is classified.” Kuvira paused, alcohol catching up. “I won’t tolerate rumors from you on this mission. You were never privy to that information.”  
  
There was a strange twist of pity in Korra’s eyes, and Kuvira hated it.  
  
“We figured it out.” With a cool tone, Korra looked at her with weariness and ease. “You were physical with us, and that was your mistake. Not someone else’s.”  
  
Kuvira felt her throat tighten. Her hands gripped the sheets tightly.  
  
Clearly in pain, Korra moved to sit up better. Her chest heaved before she settled.  
  
“What generation?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter. I’m a failed fucking result.” The Lieutenant desperately wished she had hauled a bottle back. A significant part of her wanted to retreat to get it. _To run and hide_ , she mocked to herself, and her hands shook.  
  
Korra had become accustomed to it. A flawed result among perfect soldiers. Just like Bolin. It by no means gave her shortcomings, in her belief, but superiors often felt otherwise. She had been told it was a surprise that she hadn’t turned out with horrible disfigurement, and was thrown into the batch with the rest of the successes. But no amount of running around stations could shake them from their medical records. Defective, but still a soldier. Still given her chance.  
  
“You’re not a failed-“  
  
“Then, as you pointed out, why _have_ I been sent to lord over you defects? Because it ended well for me? Because I came out the spitting image of perfect?” Her voice had risen, and Korra’s cool gaze was a silent affirmation that she needed to lower her temper.  
  
_How, and why not before_?   
  
It was horrible. Of all times to bring it up.  
  
She could see the hurt on the other’s face, and looked away.  
  
“We won’t tell anyone,” Korra replied, with all bite, and the sympathy drained away. Kuvira preferred it.  
  
In the eternity of night they sat opposed, juggling words and assumptions and miscommunication.  
  
“It was so slight.” Kuvira spoke, husk and softness. “They nearly didn’t catch it. Not all of me took to the augmentation. Much like you, I’m stunted. My hair grew fast. I had trouble keeping up with the exercises. I was deployed to earth. Took a missile to the back. The armor back then wasn’t built for me. It wasn’t as effective and fitting as it is now.”  
  
Kuvira pulled at the buttons of her uniform, hostility smoldered. She writhed out from the shirt, and turned around until her back faced the other. She remembered it every time she moved wrong. Every time it itched, every time the scarred tissue rubbed against her uniform, every time she laid down wrong. She expected disgust. To be thought less of. She remembered the expressions of the scientists in the facility when she was hauled back in.  
  
_Unfit to be a Spartan_. It burned. It brought angry tears to the corner of her eyes, on some nights.  
  
She jumped so high she nearly bounced off of the bed as she felt cold tips prod her back and the Spartan behind her murmured an apology, and began to huff into what Kuvira could only assume were her frigid hands.  
  
“It’s fine. The cold feels nice.”  
  
The tips of Korra’s fingers returned with more caution and more ease, and began to trace the images of the impact. The ugly beast of a reminder that plagued nearly forty percent of her back. It was just as red and angry as the day she had received it.  
  
Kuvira, sinew and power and command, seemed to shrink beneath the touch, skin warm and soft and alive. Her skin prickled as Korra traced the edges of muscle beyond the scar, palm mapping out her commander’s back. What compelled her, to was fathomless to the Spartan.   
  
Yet like connecting stars into beasts of the imagination, Korra moved without elective reason, observing as the other came undone before her, slumped limp into the makeshift bed and breath easy, if not occasionally hitching.  
  
She curved dips of other scars so great that Kuvira’s advanced physical repair could not have managed to patch it perfectly. She returned to the largest, revering the catastrophic edges.  
  
Korra traced it until her eyes blinked open and light filtered through the cracks of the building’s plating.  



End file.
